The Long Defeat
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash. Harry thought being enslaved by the goblins for his break-in at Gringotts was the worst thing that could happen, except for the sinking of the economy the goblins threatened if he didn't comply. But then the Malfoys bought him, and that was probably worse. Or maybe not. Updated every Saturday evening.
1. Vault Exchange

**Title: **The Long Defeat

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco, Lucius/Narcissa, mentions of Ron/Hermione

**Rating: **R

**Warnings: **Some violence, some angst, ignores the epilogue.

**Summary: **Harry thought that becoming a slave to the goblins was about the worst thing that could possibly happen, except the sinking of the wizarding economy that the goblins had threatened if he didn't. Then Lucius Malfoy showed up and offered to buy him instead, and maybe that was the worst thing. Or maybe not—at least, not if the Malfoys are sincere in their efforts to help him fool the goblins.

**Author's Notes: **This is being written as a thank-you fic for helenadax, who's given me several virtual gifts and a lot of reviews over the years. She left this prompt of Harry being enslaved by the goblins and the Malfoys stepping in to help for the Draco Tops Harry fest a few years back, but although I intended to claim it, I didn't get around to doing so before time ran out to submit fics for the fest. She asked for a happy ending and focus more on the con side than the angst side of the story. It does eventually get there, although with some angst at first. This story will be updated every Saturday evening.

The title is a phrase from _The Lord of the Rings: _"And together through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat."

**The Long Defeat**

_Chapter One—Vault Exchange_

"I don't know how you're so calm."

Hermione spoke from behind Harry, where he was studying himself in the mirror. Well, not really himself. The chain-link collar that the goblins had put around his neck, instead. Such small links, Harry thought, reaching up and tugging on them lightly, to be so searing. The metal was colder than he had known it was possible for metal to be.

"Calm?" Harry asked, and reached out to put his hand on the wooden desk beneath the mirror.

It crumbled at once, the ashes flinching away from his fingers. Harry looked at Hermione, and she took a step back from him and spent a little while staring at the wood, although all of Harry's friends knew what his magic could do to organic things by now when his anger was up. It had started after the war, and as near as Harry and Hermione could figure out, it was due to the remains of Voldemort's Horcrux in Harry. Harry supposed it had to leave _some _stain.

"You're not showing it," Hermione muttered, shaking her head.

Harry shrugged, and looked at himself in the mirror again. No, he supposed the only _visible _sign of his temper was the flush to his cheeks and the flash in his eyes—although he thought Hermione really should have noticed that, since she was one of his best friends. "What good would showing it do?" he asked. "I always knew it wouldn't last, you know, the devotion they were proclaiming to me after the war. They would need a scapegoat again sometime, and I was the perfect one. I just didn't know it would change so soon."

"The goblins shouldn't have made their threats," Hermione whispered. "And it's _wrong, _for so many people to care more about what's in their vaults instead of your life."

Harry smiled at her over his shoulder, the kind of smile that would crack his teeth if he hadn't already decided that was dumb. "They don't know me personally. They think it's only for a year, anyway, and what's so bad about that? I stole things from Gringotts. I probably deserve it somehow or other. And it's important to keep the goblins happy."

Hermione glared at him. "You don't _believe _that. And I know you haven't been reading the papers since the day you dissolved that one with Skeeter's article blaming you for Dumbledore's death."

"I know how they think." Harry rolled his neck back, and listened to the collar clink and bounce. "I always will. Anyway. This is the way it worked out. And after this year…" He let the words trail off, and saw the blurred shadow in the mirror as Hermione leaned forwards to hear him.

Harry smiled with a force that _would _crack his teeth if he thought too much about it, and nodded to Hermione. "After this year, I'm gone from the wizarding world. I'll make my own path and my own freedom, and I'm done with _every-fucking-thing else._"

Hermione closed her eyes and reached out a hand to him; Harry saw it in the mirror. Then she let it fall. "Of course," she whispered. "You deserve at least that much, when they've taken away so much."

"So glad you agree," Harry murmured, but he found Hermione's hand and squeezed it to let her know that he knew where she stood. "Let's get this over with."

* * *

"Harry Potter, designated slave of the goblins for one year…"

Harry stared over the heads of the crowd gathered to watch his punishment, staring instead at the far stone wall of the courtyard. That was what it resembled the most, for all that it was a cavern beneath Gringotts and far from the open air. A square, flat floor, and square, rising walls, sculpted by some magic or tool that Harry didn't know the name of. The walls were absolutely blank, undecorated stone, unless one counted the richness of the bronze sconces where the torches burned.

"And you will not set foot beyond the bank for the duration of that year…"

Harry could have shifted and shouted and ruined the moment, but he found he didn't want to. The crowd hadn't come to bear him silent witness or support, he knew that much; they had come to watch him be condemned and ensure that he was actually taken into Gringotts as a slave. They had come to be sure their vaults were safe.

The only way he might defy them and the goblins, for a little while, was to hold his face absolutely blank and smooth and refuse to listen to the terms of his slavery, which he knew damn well already. So he stood there, and looked at the stone, and told himself that it wasn't so bad, that it was only one more year with the Dursleys, and then he would be _free, free, free, _and he would find a place in the Muggle world that no one except his friends knew about, and bury himself deep.

"The terms to…"

It took Harry a minute to realize that the goblin who was standing up in front of the crowd on a large, scone-shaped dais and reading out the scroll had trailed off not because Harry had stopped listening to him, but because of something else. He turned his head.

Two figures were forcing their way up towards the dais, struggling as though through thick water. The crowd gave way to them, so Harry wasn't sure why they needed to struggle so much.

Then he recognized the blond hair as the smaller figure's cloak fell back and revealed his head. He nodded. Oh, right. Malfoys. Probably come to take some kind of payment from Harry in turn, and demand that he be a slave loaned out to them sometimes. They could make those demands all they liked, but Harry knew they wouldn't get anything. The goblins had been very clear about how Harry would serve them and only them, and loaning him out to wizards—who might treat him a little more kindly—would never happen.

So Harry watched in amusement as Lucius and Draco Malfoy halted in front of the dais and stared up at the goblin. Behind them came Narcissa, following the clear path her family had made for her rather than struggling. Harry met her eyes, and she flashed him a dazzling smile.

Harry stared. The smile wasn't the smirk he would have expected, and Narcissa's hand briefly extended to him, out from under the sleeve of her robe, as though to offer him something to hang onto. It disappeared again, but the sight made him wary. What had they come for? Was it some fiendish way around the goblin laws that they had come up with because of the life-debt Harry owed Narcissa?

For a moment, he wondered whether life-debts would allow the Malfoys to enslave him when this year was done.

And then he remembered that he didn't care, because he would leave, and allow the unpaid debts to fall on him as they would. Hermione had warned him once that debts like that, not repaid, could diminish a wizard's magic, but what would Harry care? He would be living in a place where he didn't need magic.

"Mr. Malfoy." The goblin holding the scroll moved so that the sound of crumpling parchment drifted around the room. "You have something to say?"

"Yes, I do." Lucius's voice was clear, and he stood up as though he were still the all-powerful Malfoy lord and governor of Hogwarts that he had been when Harry was in his second year. Harry just watched. He was almost going to enjoy the moment when Lucius found out that the goblins weren't obliged to yield Harry to him. "I wish to make an offer on a certain slave, one that I will take into my home and punish as I see fit."

There was a grumble around the cavern. Sarcastic laughter, protests because that might mean the goblins wouldn't feel that their debt was fulfilled and take the bank away, cries of joy—it could have been all of those and none, and Harry wouldn't have cared. He went back to looking at the stone wall.

Lucius was going to fail. That was all there was to it. And a good thing, too, because while the goblins would put Harry to back-breaking labor and probably starve him, they couldn't use the _Cruciatus _on him. The Malfoys would.

Harry was sorry for what the _Sectumsempra_ curse had turned out to be, the mess he'd made of Draco's chest. But he wouldn't forget, he wouldn't _ever _forget, that Draco had been trying to use an Unforgivable Curse on him when it happened.

_Never again. _The goblins' slavery was the last time Harry ever intended to submit to bad treatment of any kind.

"You cannot offer us anything we would accept," the goblin with the scroll said, and Harry thought about watching to see Lucius's mouth gape, but in the end the wall was more interesting. "We have chosen, and for his crimes, Harry Potter must pay us the gift of a year's labor—"

Harry also thought about spitting when he heard the word _gift_, but endurance was the best option here, and the goblins would make him pay for disrespecting them in public. He stood there with his mouth shut.

"I can offer you a vault."

Harry looked around, gaping. Then he saw Draco and Narcissa watching him, and shut his mouth again. He would not look weak in front of them, would not yield, would not bow down. _Never _again. He'd had enough of giving in.

"We have enough money," the goblin with the scroll said, though Harry was sure he wasn't the only one who had seen the minor tremor work its way through his claws. "We do not need anything you can give us. Need I remind you that we would take away your money if not for Harry Potter surrendering to us?"

"Not money." Lucius gave the goblin a hard, sweet smile. That expression made Harry want him to lose all over again. "The vault itself. The carving out of rock, the space beneath Gringotts. Yours to do what you will with. Provided that you give Harry Potter to my family and count the debt paid."

More gasping. Harry stared. He could see Hermione on her feet out of the corner of her eye, her hands making furious gestures, but he couldn't look away enough from the Malfoys to see what she wanted him to do.

That was—incredible. Harry knew from the research Hermione had helped him do into goblins, when he still had some hope of getting out of paying the debt, that the goblins hated the way the wizarding world had them hold Gringotts and all its contents in trust for wizards. The goblins had been the ones to dig the caverns, create and name and number all the chambers, and set up the guards like dragons that kept the vaults safe. They had had to accept wizarding gold after they began losing their political standing to the Ministry's new laws. They could pretend to own the space, of course, but they never would as long as wizards still maintained a familial claim to them.

To have a wizard give part of that space back to them might satisfy a goblin's craving for possession and ownership in a way that not even having Harry as a slave would do.

The goblin on the dais swayed on his feet and cast a longing glance back towards the ranks of goblins behind him, as though he hoped someone might come forwards and volunteer to save him from making the decision. But all of them stood there, enchanted by the vision, maybe, or not wanting the burden, and the goblin grunted and turned back again.

"You would need to hold by certain terms," he said.

Harry clasped his hands in front of him and held them there, tight. He was going to break his wrists if he kept standing there like that, holding them, he thought. It wouldn't matter.

"You would need to make sure that Harry Potter did not venture outside the Manor for a year, and you would need to ensure that his suffering in part paid for our suffering, when the dragon rose from the vaults," the goblin continues.

Harry bore down, and down. The bones were creaking. He could hear Lucius Malfoy's calm replies, somewhere behind the roaring of blood in his ears, but those didn't matter, not _next _to that roaring.

He had made his last decision to submit. He had said that he would allow the goblins to enslave him, but he had never said anything about the Malfoys. He was going to break free now, because he knew what they could do to him, _would _do to him. They had the life-debts to hold them back, maybe, but Harry owed them two in return, and they were forced to abide by the terms that the goblins had said they were going to make for Harry's slavery in the original contract.

They would curse him. They would increase his hunger until he wanted to eat his own flesh. (Harry knew that Lucius could cast that curse, having run across it in records of the first war). They would make him writhe with pain, and they would make him do impossible things, and call him _freak _in the same way that the Dursleys had, if not for the same reason. At least with the goblins it would be revenge, not abuse.

Harry took a quick breath, light, curt. He already knew how he was going to move. His magic wouldn't do anything for the chain-link collar around his throat or the chains he was bound with, but he could lunge to the side and touch the goblin. He would crumble into ash. And while everyone was still gasping over that, Harry would touch Lucius's wand into ash, and then Summon his own, and Apparate.

He didn't care that he had never used that particular magic on someone else before. In fact, he was usually careful not to touch anyone but his friends when he was this angry. He was soaring in the middle of a clean, almost heavenly despair. He was going to break free, or he was going to die, and at the moment, it didn't matter much which one it was.

A small noise caught his attention. He turned his head, and saw that Malfoy, or Draco, was standing there with his eyes on Harry, shaking his head frantically. He hesitated, then conjured a small tongue of fire on his wand, which danced and vanished at once. His eyes on Harry still didn't move, still clung and pleaded.

Harry stared back, not knowing what it was, except a delaying tactic. What—

And then he knew. Malfoy was reminding him of the Fiendfyre, the life-debt he owed Harry. He was trying to tell him that this wasn't a trick, or a plot to hurt Harry, that they were going to do something else. Or perhaps simply try to fulfill the debt.

Harry stared again. Draco's eyes on his were bright and frantic.

_He only wants to save his father's life. He doesn't care about me._

But there was also the fact that Draco had been watching Harry closely enough to recognize the rage, and had tried to prevent it from exploding. The same thing might happen during his enslavement, Harry supposed. Perhaps the Malfoys would treat him better than Harry was imagining, simply out of fear of their own lives.

_And if they don't, I can escape better later, anyway. I can dissolve all their wands and their house-elves to ash, and I can smash their anti-Apparition wards better than the ones on the bank, too._

So Harry relaxed, and stood there without a word as the goblins concluded the deal and transferred his "ownership" to Lucius Malfoy. All the time, Draco watched him, never looking away, even when Harry shifted and sent him a glare. Draco only shook his head and continued watching.

_Not what I thought he would do._

That intrigued Harry enough to put off the escape he would have tried. For now.

* * *

Draco wanted to bow his head and sigh when the deal concluded without further problems, and it turned out that his father now owned Harry Potter. But he couldn't. The goblins wouldn't want that reaction from him, wouldn't expect it. They had sold Potter in the first place only because Draco's father had made a sly little speech implying how much he would love to abuse his authority over Potter. The goblins would want gloating. They would want _villains_.

One thing Draco had learned over the past two years was that he didn't have the heart of a true villain. He couldn't torture, he couldn't kill, and he was even bad at maniacal laughter.

But he could hang on until they had Potter out of here and could explain the truth to him. He had to.

For now, his task was to match stares with Potter and try to ignore the sense of dancing power around him—another reason Draco would never make a good villain, he was far too sensitive to other people's magic. It could unfold in circles, or in sharp knives, or in spirals.

Potter's magic was spirals _edged _with knives. Because he had to be special like that, in the middle of everything else.

Draco shook his head, eyes still connected with Potter's. It was starting to hurt, almost, holding the eye of someone who had the power to destroy everyone in the giant room if he wanted to. But there was no one else to reassure Potter that they weren't kidnapping him or doing something else awful to him. So he stood there, and closed his eyes in relief at last when the goblin who'd been making the announcement so far said, in a high, croaking voice, "Mr. Potter is now the property of the Malfoys."

Draco felt the cool presence at his shoulder that indicated his mother had drawn near. _A good idea, _he thought, looking up. _I'm glad she's here before Father. _Lucius was the one Potter had fought more than once, and his mother was the one Potter owed the life-debt to.

"Mr. Potter," his mother said, her voice like a soft snowy shadow. "I hope that you will come with us without trouble."

Potter shrugged, but his magic sharpened and drew in towards his body, in a spiked maelstrom this time. Draco had to bite his lip to keep from snapping at his mother when she reached out to take the chains that wrapped around Potter's arms. It was like trying to use a tiny leash on a dragon.

But in the end, although he kept his head bowed and his neck quivering as though he would like to fight his way free, Potter let Narcissa tug him along. He walked with his hands clasped in front of him, and all his muscles bunched, and the chains rang like celebratory bells.

The goblins laughed and clapped as they watched. Potter's friends were on their feet, the Mudblood with her hands over her mouth. Draco couldn't help sneering at them as their little cavalcade passed. They thought this was worse than the goblins, but of course they did. They would probably rather see Potter dead than associating with former Death Eaters of his own free will.

"Harry! Mate!"

That was the Weasel, running to catch up with them. Draco turned around, exchanging a flickering glance with his father. They had to keep the act up in public, which meant they had to restrain Weasel from trying to break Potter free, with violence if necessary.

Potter was the one who restrained him before Draco could even put his hand on his wand, and he did it with nothing more than a nod and an intense gaze. "I think this will be better," he said, not looking at Draco or Narcissa or Lucius, his presence dismissing them, erasing them out of his life. "Better than it—would have been. Even though they won't let me outside the Manor."

"But we could have visited you in Gringotts, and now we can't!" Weasel was rocking and hopping on the balls of his feet, not coming any nearer, but looking as if he would have dearly liked to. Draco shuddered to think what would have happened if Potter had not held him back as far as he had.

"I don't think you could have," Potter said, and turned to face Granger, who had hurried up behind the Weasel, not something Draco had even noticed. "Hermione, explain it to him. You were there when the goblins told us about the terms of the debt I would pay."

"It's true, Ron," Granger said, her body angled as if she would move in between Weasel and Harry in a minute. She laid a caressing hand on Weasel's arm, and Draco had the most nauseating flash of what they were probably doing the minute Potter's back was turned. He had to close his eyes and shake his head to clear it. "Remember? The goblins said they would take Harry's freedom for a year. That means that they would have made sure that he couldn't venture out of the bank, and no one could come _in_ to see him. They would probably have had him working in the deep vaults, anyway, and no one's allowed down there unless their vaults are already there."

She was looking at his father, Draco realized. Well, perhaps she realized the significance of him giving up a vault to "rescue" Potter.

_Let's hope that she remembers the significance of life-debts, and that she can teach Weasley._

"All right, then," Weasley said, and leaned forwards as if he imagined that a whisper would evade the fascinated people craning their necks from all directions. "But the Malfoys have _wands_."

"Right, they do," Potter said, and smiled. Draco shuddered as that edged magic brushed up against his skin again. In that mood, Potter could burn or damn the world, or perhaps leap out a high tower without a safety net below. Draco was a little surprised that he hadn't done something like that already. Presumably the goblins' threat had kindled his martyr complex. "But there are ways around that."

Weasley's gaze sharpened. "Harry," he said, "before you pull a dragon's tail, make sure that you talk to us."

_Pull a dragon's tail? _Draco thought it was a metaphor. He hoped it was a metaphor.

Then he remembered what he had heard about the debt that the goblins had insisted Potter pay them back for, and he was no longer sure.

"I will," Potter said. "Lots." He turned to Lucius and cocked his head. "I presume that I'll be allowed to send owls to my friends?"

Draco's father had perfected an even better mask for the public in the past year since the trials than he had had before. He shook his head slightly now and curled one finger in a beckoning gesture that made Weasel start frothing at the mouth. Granger looked little better, but she was pulling on Potter's arm and trying to say something to him that Potter didn't listen to.

Potter just nodded, remotely. The look in his green eyes made it seem as if he was gazing through a window at another world.

Draco shivered, and ducked around his mother to be on the other side of her from Potter as they paraded him out of the bank, and the cameras flashed, and the shouts resounded, and the curses came their way—and deflected from his father's careful Shield Charms and the bank's wards—as some people thought this transfer of the debt meant that they would lose their money to the goblins after all. He could not _wait _until they could explain everything, and Potter might want stop wanting to kill them.

_Might _being the important word there.

His hands shook, and he scrubbed his palms quickly on his robes, and continued walking.


	2. The Long Con

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—The Long Con_

Harry's first thought about Malfoy Manor was that it held more space than anyone would ever want or need.

His second thought was: anyone _sensible. _

His third thought was that the Malfoys weren't sensible, which was probably going to have consequences for him, one of these days.

Oddly, it wasn't that bad as long as he kept his eyes aimed straight ahead and followed the tug on the chains. He presumed the Malfoys would replace them with something else soon. Couldn't have your slave clattering around in those great old iron things and making so much noise and general tumult. Perhaps a delicate, decorative set of chains, made in elaborate white iron studded with diamonds, suitable for the people they intended to show him off to.

If they had the money to buy chains like that, after the vault that Lucius had given up to the goblins. But Harry dismissed that thought with a snort. If they were _really _strapped for wealth, they wouldn't have offered for his worthless carcass. And they could make all the money they wanted by showing him off to their friends, or associates, or whatever one called the people they used to be Death Eaters along with.

They led him to a large room that looked like some sort of indoor garden. Harry glanced around, assessing it. The room was roughly oval, with a pond in the middle of it, under the only portion of the ceiling that was open to the sky. White marble walls curved down to the trellises and platforms where plants stood. There were nodding flowers there, but more climbing vines, and what looked like a lot of miniature fruit trees. Harry thought about destroying everything with his magic, because he could.

And then he sighed and sat down where Narcissa gestured for him to sit, in a chair before a desk, which probably had charms on it to preserve it from the wet and the heat. What else could he do right now? Unless he wanted to kill them with a touch, and his rage had drained as they walked away from the bank.

_I got through the Dursleys. I got through half the wizarding world deciding to turn their backs on me once the goblins threatened them. I'm going to get through this._

The rage would come back if he needed it, if the Malfoys tried to curse him or hurt him more than they had done already. He knew it would. So, for right now, he fixed his eyes on the patient, pale faces watching him, and waited to hear exactly what they wanted from him.

Narcissa was the first to speak, her hands as lightly clasped as though she were speaking to a house-elf about arrangements for a dinner party. They all sat behind the desk, but the desk itself was so wide and long that Harry couldn't see the chairs. "I suppose you don't understand the reason why we bought you."

"I understand," Harry said. "You wanted to make me miserable, and make money off me."

From the side, Malfoy—Draco—gaped at him. Harry rolled his eyes. Perhaps _he _hadn't thought of the money-making potential that a captive Harry Potter could mean for his parents, but Harry was sure Lucius and Narcissa had. He met both of their eyes in turn and added, "Isn't that right?"

Narcissa and Lucius exchanged a glance of the kind Harry had seen Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon give each other when they were trying to come up with a last-minute present for Dudley. Then Lucius shook his head, and Narcissa sighed and sat up. "No. We had to lie to convince the goblins that we intended something as severe for you as they did, but we do, in fact, want to protect you and treat you as well as we can. You'll have to stay inside the walls of the Manor; we can't do anything about that. And you'll have to act broken and despised if any goblins come on visits of investigation. There are other things we can't allow you to do, like use your wand outside the wards where someone could detect it. But we do intend to work _with _you to give you a comfortable year, and make it only a pretense that we are mistreating you."

Harry didn't let his spine relax. This was too much like some of the things that the Dursleys had said over the years, too much like the things Voldemort had sometimes said to convince Harry he wasn't so bad after all. Lure him close, make him relax, soften him up, and then launch the hammer blow. "Why would you do that?" he demanded. "There's no _reason _for you to do anything but hate me."

Narcissa again clasped her fingers in front of her, or interwound them. The way she was sitting, with her shoulders high and still and stiff, set off all sorts of _other _alarms in Harry's head, because, frankly, that wasn't the way he thought normal people, ones who had sensible reasons for buying him, sat.

_But maybe it's stupid to demand common sense out of anyone in this scenario. It's stupid that the wizarding public abandoned me and allowed me to be sold in the first place. _

"We have life-debts to you," Narcissa said quietly. "Not to mention the other less tangible but no less real debts that we owe you for having killed the Dark Lord and restored what we can have of our good name. That my husband is free right now and not in prison—and perhaps also my son—I must attribute to you." She shook her head slightly. "I see by your eyes that you do not believe me. Nevertheless, you should ask yourself for what _other _reason we would do this. I am confident that the ones you come up with would make even less sense for someone like us than this. If you think about it."

Harry leaned against his chair and gaped at her. He was too late to hide his surprise anyway, so he said the first thing that came into his head. "No one has _ever _said anything about what they owe me for defeating Voldemort."

Simultaneous flinches from all three of them, which Harry could have found funny if he was in the mood. As it was, Narcissa bowed her head and murmured, "We would ask you not to speak of him by that name, since it will still cause us distress. But that is one of the reasons. Did you think we would be _un_grateful?"

Harry ran a hand over his face. He was too tired for this. But he had been too young to participate in the war, too, and too young to lose his parents, and too powerful for the Ministry to treat normally. He might as well get used to being "too" everything. "I thought you would be angry at me for losing your husband the position he had in _his _inner circle."

"By the end of the war, I no longer cared about that," Lucius said, perhaps because his wife had nudged him in the side with her elbow. "I wanted only to be free of the demands that pressed on me."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Why? Anyone at the time would have bet on Vol—him to win the war, and not me."

Lucius grimaced. "I did not say that having faith in you was easy. Only that we had no choice. I was out of favor. So was my wife, for having gone to Severus Snape and persuaded him to swear an Unbreakable Vow saying that he would complete Draco's task if Draco failed at it." Harry wondered if he was the only one who noticed that Draco turned his face away at the words, his throat bobbing. "And Draco, for not having completed a clearly impossible task that was only ever intended as punishment in the first place. If he had won, the Dark Lord would have destroyed us, sooner or later." He spent a moment staring at Harry as if he could impress the next words into his mind telepathically, and then burst out, "I _did not _become a Death Eater to spend my days in a piranha pool, with everyone else trying to eat me alive."

"A very good comparison," Narcissa murmured, laying her hand over her husband's.

"Okay," Harry said. He thought about it a little more, and came up with a question that Hermione would probably never forgive him if he didn't ask. "But why not protest earlier, when the goblins wanted to enslave me? Why now?"

Lucius gave him a strange look. It went on being strange, until Harry didn't think it was simply that he was tired. Then Narcissa whispered into his ear, and Lucius laughed a little, some of the lines of strain on his face easing.

"Do something _direct_?" Lucius asked. "When the goblins could have stopped us, and would have sensed right away that our ruse was only that, instead of the plan we came up with to trick them?" He snorted. "Of course not. We are Malfoys."

Harry thought of pointing out that if Malfoys could snort, which wasn't very dignified either, then they could sure as hell act directly. But Malfoy—Draco—was fidgeting in his seat now, and the chains were heavy, and part of him wasn't hesitant to trust, to reach out and accept what was offered. If only because there had been no hope, and suddenly there was some, and he was as incapable of ignoring it as he had been of ignoring the food that the Dursleys offered.

_Just so there are no misunderstandings, though._

"I have magic capable of crumbling any organic thing I touch," he said abruptly. "Wood, plant fibers, anything that was once alive. And flesh. It's why the goblins have me in chains instead of ropes." He fixed his eyes on Narcissa, since she was the one who seemed to speak the most for them and understand everybody's position the most. "Try to hurt me and I'll use it on you."

Draco jumped as though he wanted to run out of the room. Even Lucius paled. But Narcissa reached out, her hand slow-moving and subtle, but not hesitant, and placed her fingers on the bones of his wrist in what was almost a caress.

"We would expect nothing else, when so many have played you false," she said. "Welcome home, Harry." She stood up and gestured, and a house-elf appeared in front of Harry's chair, bowing so fast to everyone that his ears almost fell off. "This is Ren. He will be your personal elf for your stay here. Would you like to go to your room now?"

And maybe it was a trap, but Harry didn't care anymore. The backwash of rage and hope had left him exhausted, trembling.

"Yes," he said, and stood up. Ren snapped his fingers, and the chains vanished.

Harry lifted his wrists and rubbed them a little. He hadn't realized that the weight irritated him more than not being able to move freely until that weight was gone. He turned his hands over, and frowned for a moment at the welts there.

"Allow me," Narcissa said, and leaned her wand against the welts. Harry passively allowed her to heal him. Maybe he should have been more suspicious, reacting faster, striking back, but the Malfoys hadn't proven themselves treacherous like the Dursleys so often were—

_Yet_.

And that weariness was still there, weighing him down more heavily than any chains. Too many changes in his life in too short a period of time, and there was nothing he could do, and nothing he wanted to do.

"Yous is coming along now," Ren said, and led the way around a corner and up a flight of stairs that looked as if they climbed forever. Harry decided he could climb them, though, for the promise of a soft bed at the end.

He could feel his brain trying to work as he climbed, coming up with ways around the prohibition on sending letters to his friends, and he could hear the Malfoys starting to talk behind him. Part of him thought he should listen.

He couldn't care enough, though. Resignation and rage and hatred and relief combined to make him drop straight down the moment his head hit the pillows, and if someone pinched or pulled at him after that, he would deal with the bruises when he woke.

* * *

"Can we trust him in the house?" Draco's father was asking. "You heard what he said about his magic. If can touch any of those old chairs that Aunt Emily left and disintegrate them—"

"I should think that he wouldn't do that as long as we take care not to irritate him," Narcissa said, and turned to look at Draco.

Draco glared at her. "What? Do you think I would try to irritate him the way I did in school? No! Not knowing he can do that." He shivered again. This was worse than that remote look in Potter's eyes when they were taking him out of the bank. Now he was going to be in close quarters with Potter for at least a year.

_He might change. _

Draco didn't think Potter had changed since the war, though, except to grow angrier and more dangerous. He'd still been more concerned about his friends when they were trying to get him out of there than the welts on his wrists or the true motives of his captors or his change in circumstances. And if Potter started trouble with him…

"You need not speak with him," his mother said, shaking her head. "I think we've proven today that I'm the only one of us who can successfully converse with him." She sighed and glanced at Lucius. "You might at least make an effort, Lucius, as the older man, and one who does not have a boyhood rivalry with Mr. Potter."

"He cost me one of my house-elves," Lucius said, standing up and arranging the formal robes fussily around himself. Draco smiled a little. At least he had a kindred spirit in his father. As long as there was a definite goal, buying Potter before the goblins could take him into slavery and thus repaying the life-debt, his father had moved like a comet, but now that the goal had arrived, he saw no reason why he should be troubled further. "I need not be sympathetic to him."

Draco nodded. "I'll be happy to stay away from him and not start fights," he told his mother. "But in school, _he _was always the ones who started them."

For a moment, Narcissa stood before them. Then she raised her eyebrows and said, "Very well," and swept out of the room.

There was another thing that Draco and his father were kindred spirits in, and that was in being able to feel like shit because of a single glance from his mother. Draco winced and looked at Lucius, who had gone a little pale.

"I suppose," his father said in strangled tones, "that _common _civility to the boy will not be out of the question, since we did bring him into our home. I would not have it said that we treated guests inhospitably." He glanced at Draco. "But I expect you to help me in this, son, instead of undermining my efforts."

Draco squawked a little before he could get control of himself. "When have I ever _undermined your efforts_?"

His father ignored the question magnificently and flipped his cloak over his arm, calling to the elves to help him. Draco, who preferred to get undressed by himself even if his father _did _reassure him that there was no recorded instance of a house-elf ever taking advantage of a naked human, trudged up to his own room. Sometimes, he would have liked to Apparate, and this was one of them.

He glanced once down the corridor that held Potter's rooms, and then turned his back firmly. He kept nothing down there; when his mother's family had been alive, they were used as guest rooms for them, but no Black had come to visit in years. Draco had no reason to feel deprived by the loss of a wing.

_It's still going to be hell sharing my home with Potter, _he thought, as he banged the door of his bedroom to behind him and began to take off his clothes.

But they had done what they had to do. Draco had learned the difference between that and what you simply wanted to do well enough in the war.

* * *

Harry opened his eyes and sat up, magic waking in his muscles, stretching, pacing back and forth.

No. He didn't need to break out of chains, out of cages. He was in Malfoy Manor, not the goblins' vaults, or wherever else beneath Gringotts they would have had him work. He was safe.

Harry closed his eyes and shook his head back and forth. _Safe, _in Malfoy Manor. How Hermione would laugh if he told her that.

And he would find some way to tell her that. He would play along with the Malfoys and fool the goblins into believing that the Malfoys were treating him like their broken toy, but he was not going to go a year without communicating with his friends.

He had been a bit foolish to ask about it in front of an audience, though, he had to admit. The Malfoys had done exactly what they needed to. Lucius had offered a vault and no more extravagant price. They hadn't mentioned or discussed anything except what would help them, hadn't wasted a word more.

There was something in that Harry could admire, and something a lot unlike what he would have _expected _from the Malfoys. He would have thought waste was what they were about, not economy.

Harry stretched his arms above his head, looking around the room. It looked like it wasn't much larger than the drawing room at Grimmauld Place, which made it a good choice. If the goblins visited unexpectedly, the Malfoys would be a little hard-put to explain why he had a grand room. They couldn't give him a house-elf's sleeping area, maybe, since he wouldn't fit, but they didn't have to be _nice _either.

He put on his glasses and climbed slowly out of bed. The windows were false, obviously enchanted, displaying views of the sea and a snowy winter field that Harry didn't pay much attention to, but it _felt _like early morning. His stomach grumbled, and Harry touched it once before he glanced down at his clothes.

The Malfoys would probably expect him to appear with clean but not rich clothes, both in the play and in reality. Trouble was, Harry hadn't brought any other clothes with him. The goblins had specified in the "contract" that made their slavery all nice and legal that they would provide him with rags to wear.

Harry shrugged, and cast quick charms on himself, scrubbing his skin and the fabric of his clothes, then refreshing his breath and arranging his hair so that it looked as though someone had angrily smashed it flat with a hand, rather than angrily run a hand right through the middle. It was the best he could do, even Hermione agreed on that.

Thus armed and fortified, he set out to find if the staircase was really as tall as he remembered.

Ren appeared to meet him before he got to the door, smiling and bowing. "Harry is being restings?" he asked anxiously.

Harry blinked at him and took a minute to translate that. "I've had all the rest I need," he replied, when he realized that he really couldn't. "Now I'm going downstairs."

Ren nodded. "Mistress Narcissa is to be waiting for Harry Potter," he announced, and the door clicked open at the same moment as he vanished. A moment later, Harry heard the sheets on the bed vanishing as well.

He relaxed. At least he wouldn't need to be responsible for cleaning _that _up, then, and the goblins were unlikely to realize the difference between linen cleaned by one kind of magic and one cleaned by another.

Yes, the staircase was still formidable. Harry went down the ivory-white treads that curved around and around, and discovered that the Malfoys' economy was an illusion. He had never seen this part of Malfoy Manor, or else they had cleaned and polished and _expanded _after the war. So much whiteness and brightness everywhere, and what could be gilded was.

Harry paused, then shrugged. His will had brought him this far, and he didn't want to dissolve the Malfoys or disintegrate the house—yet. Besides, his magic couldn't do anything about the gilding unless it was on wood.

He descended the last curve of the staircase, and another hovering elf, who was flicking its hands at the floor in such a way that the dust appeared to leap up and become part of its fingers, bowed and squeaked Harry on his way through a forest of corridors. Another elf appeared whenever he was about to be lost and kept him moving.

By the time he arrived at a door considerably taller than he was and made of black oak, with silver handles and hinges, it was ten minutes later and Harry was hungry enough to kill. He paused and shut his eyes, bowing his head for a few seconds while he thought. He could go in there and start an augment with the one Malfoy who had actually seemed sympathetic to him yesterday, or he could have something to eat.

Hunger won. Since his childhood, it always did. He nudged the door open, his annoyance only increasing when it swung as if it was on a pivot instead of hinges.

Then he rolled his eyes. They were the Malfoys, this was Malfoy Manor. What did he expect?

He stepped in, and found Narcissa sitting on the near end of a large, round table fit for about seventeen knights. Harry stood in the doorway and waited for her to notice him, which she did after a moment. She had the _Daily Prophet _spread in front of her, and he thought her smile was strained when she greeted him. Well, it _would _be.

"Harry," she said. "Do you mind if I call you that? Of course we'll have to adopt some degrading title in front of those awful goblins, but your last name seems a little formal for everyday wear." Her smile eased. "And I'm certain you'll hear it enough from my husband and son to remember who you are."

"Yes," Harry said, as he sat down across from her. "That's fine." He glanced at the table, where plates of scones, kippers, toast, eggs, and some kind of mash, as well as giant pots of porridge and tea, had appeared. He blinked. Generally he'd at least seen the food arriving at Hogwarts.

"Thank you for granting me permission," Narcissa said, with a little nod, as if she was really honored. "I was waiting for you to join me before I ate. Are you hungry?"

Considering he already had some honey spread on a scone and the entire thing jammed in his mouth, Harry thought the answer to that question redundant. He nodded and tried to slow down. He hadn't eaten much yesterday, because rage had filled his stomach instead, and then he'd gone to bed early.

Luckily, although Narcissa made some remark about the age of the house now and then, or said that she hoped he'd slept well, she didn't say anything else that actually required an answer in words. Harry munched his way through the rest of breakfast, too absorbed in the flavors to glance at her often.

He did look up when Narcissa said, "You may be wondering why my husband and son haven't joined us for breakfast."

Harry did his best to give a large shrug, to convey that he hadn't wondered it and didn't care.

Narcissa smiled a little sharply, but continued. "They were agreed that we needed to rescue you, to fulfill the life-debt and the debt of honor we owed you, but now that you are here, they don't know quite what to do with you. I would give them a few days to loosen up and start treating you with courtesy."

Harry only nodded, and returned to his meal. That was fine with him. He could be polite if he met them, because they _had _rescued him, and because his life had changed so much. It included more important things than the taunts Malfoy might make about his hair or his parents or—other things that had irritated him. Some of Harry's Hogwarts memories had gone dream-like in the intense time since the war. He remembered the mysteries and the battles and the moments of high emotion.

But really, who cared what Malfoy had said to him on a spring afternoon seven years ago? Harry had been furious about it at the time, but he wasn't that person anymore.

Lucius might be different. Harry still remembered that he had nearly killed Ginny with the diary, that he wouldn't have cared if she had died. But he could stay away from Lucius, too, or be polite when he came near. It wasn't as though Lucius Malfoy would be dying to spend time with him, either.

"I think you should have something to do," Narcissa said, when Harry had finally stopped clearing his plate every time he piled more food on it. "Not slave work, not in the way the goblins would have meant it, but something to occupy you."

Harry faced her and nodded. "Whatever you like," he added aloud, when he realized she was waiting for that. It seemed strange to him that she would want the words at all, but she was the only Malfoy in front of him right now. He might as well be polite to her, too.

"What would _you_ like to do?" Narcissa asked quietly.

Harry smiled in spite of himself. "Fly, but I know you can't let me outside," he said. "What about a room where I can train?"

"With hexes, and so on?" Narcissa nodded. "Of course. The goblins' demands did rather interrupt your Auror training, didn't they?"

Harry shrugged, and didn't answer. Let her think what she liked. She was hardly the only one assuming that he would be an Auror when he got free of his imprisonment, instead of leaving the wizarding world forever, as Harry still intended to do. His friends and the Malfoys had spoken up for him. No one else. He was done with the lot of them.

"I think we have a room that can be _adapted, _although no room ready right now," Narcissa said, and tapped her finger against her lips for a moment before a house-elf appeared at her side. Harry blinked, wondering if she had called it in silently, the way that people would cast a nonverbal spell, and then shrugged and leaned back. Perhaps it was something as simple as the elves sensing the mood of people who lived in the house. "Triffy, if you will examine the rooms in the south wing and see which can best be spared as a training room?"

Triffy bowed. He seemed to be a less excitable elf than Ren, Harry thought, but he was probably more senior, to be serving Narcissa. "Triffy be knowing all the rooms in the south wing, Mistress," he murmured. "The room of the couches would be being the most appropriate."

Narcissa smiled. "Of course. Thank you, Triffy." She turned to Harry as the elf disappeared. "We have a room that we store old couches in, because they're still fine furniture but are unsightly due to stains or burns that even the elves can't remove. Or sometimes, simply, the color chosen, which tends to resist Transfiguration because of the accidental magic of children." She shook her head, her lips narrow. "I don't know _what _my husband's ancestors were thinking."

Harry stirred a little. "You don't have to—I mean, I can practice somewhere else if you don't want to move them."

Narcissa waved her hand. "We are already using wizardspace to store them. It'll be a simple matter to expand the wizardspace so that you can have some empty places to practice. It is infinitely flexible, after all."

Harry found the room for a smile for the first time since he'd walked through the doors of the Manor .That wasn't Hermione's theory of wizardspace at all, and he wondered what she would say if she could hear Narcissa's. "Thank you. I appreciate it."

Narcissa nodded and leaned back, thinking. "You might be practicing sometimes when a goblin comes over. They're likely to make at least one unannounced visit. We should think of a suitable lie for you to be practicing hexes."

Harry clenched his hands under the table. He was _tired _of lying. He wanted to tell everyone to go fuck themselves, and mean it. But he couldn't do that until a year had gone past, so he might as well make the best of what he had.

"You want me trained as a bodyguard," he said. "Rather than take my magic away from me, you thought you'd use it."

Narcissa's eyebrows slowly rose. "That is not at all a bad idea," she said. "And it would make a good reason for you to be outside the Manor with your wand, as long as you don't mind accompanying my son to Diagon Alley."

_My son, _Harry thought. _She never refers to him as "Draco." I wonder why? _He nodded. "I wouldn't mind."

"Good." Narcissa rose and gave a slight bow to him that Harry returned before he thought about it. "I hope you can be happy with us, Harry. And I have hope that my husband and son will attempt to return the polite tolerance you will offer them."

Harry, with less hope, nonetheless nodded again, and stood up to call Ren to escort him to the couches room.


	3. Dueling Stances

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Dueling Stances_

Draco looked around curiously when he came down to breakfast. His mother ate before he or his father did, always, but as usual, she lingered at the table, sipping a cup of tea. But there was a second plate not far from hers, and it wasn't as though one of the elves would be permitted to have it, which left—

"Potter?" he asked incredulously, staring at Narcissa.

"Yes, he was here," his mother said, and turned a page in the paper. "I believe he's in the south wing by now, practicing in the room that Triffy will clear for him. He'll need to keep up with his hexes if we're to have the pretense that he's your bodyguard." She clucked her tongue and shook her head. "_Will _you look at this? Celestina Warbeck has taken another lover, and once again she went after someone who's already married. Disgraceful."

Draco sat back and tried to stop gaping. His breakfast was appearing, but his mother hated it if she could see half-chewed food in his mouth. "You're giving him a _training room? _We're going to pretend that he's a _bodyguard_?"

"Well, the poor boy has to do something other than sit around all day," Narcissa said, riffling the paper closed and looking at the back page. From her slight sneer, Draco knew the political cartoon was incompetently drawn, again. "This makes the most sense, and will allow us to have our story in place before a goblin visits."

"I think we've done all we have to."

His mother sighed delicately and laid the paper down. "You knew that it would not be easy to get him out," she said. "But what did you think would happen afterwards? We cannot simply pretend that he doesn't exist, although from the look on Harry's face this morning he might have preferred that, as long as he gets fed."

"_Harry_?"

"No one will insist you call him that," his mother said calmly. "He seemed rather surprised when I claimed the privilege. You can get along with him from a distance and not make friends, as long as you _do _get along. If he starts a fight, so be it, I'll make sure he understands my displeasure, but the same thing applies to you, Draco."

Draco shook his head. He'd eaten an early dinner last night, but he couldn't touch his food yet, not until he understood what his mother was talking about. "We don't have to do anything more for him than we already did! Why are we giving him a training room and coming up with stories at all?"

Narcissa half-closed her eyes. "I must admit to some relief that you are not already on your own, if you cannot think further of the consequences than the immediate action," she murmured.

Draco winced, and his mother reached out and gently touched the back of his hand. "Your father would say much the same thing," she said. "But this is the reason.

"We promised that we would help him fool the goblins into thinking he was still a slave. He can't do that on his own, particularly if the goblins appear and he isn't acting like a slave and all of us ignore him when he asks for help. If he's bored, he could tear the house apart, or try to escape, and then the risk we took and the sacrifice of the vault mean nothing. And someone might get hurt, either him or you. Or possibly your father, although I will be having a little _talk _with him later about antagonizing Harry.

"We don't have to do this, Draco, but we should. The life-debts justify it. We do not behave graciously, the way we should, once and then stop. We follow through with the action and complete it. And in this case, the action will not be complete until a year in the future."

Draco had to think about the words, turning them over and over in his head like jewels falling through his hands, until he got most of the way through his breakfast. All the time, his mother sat across from him, reading through a paper she had obviously finished, instead of getting up and walking away as she usually did.

Draco finally swallowed and said, "I—think I see. And I'm going to go find Potter."

"Are you?" His mother didn't look up.

"To offer him some help, and get our stories straight if someone asks."

His mother looked up this time, and Draco felt her approval, gentle and warm as an arctic summer.

"There's the son I raised."

* * *

Harry rolled on the floor, then almost did a handspring when the floor itself opened and started hurling hexes at him. He was panting, and laughing, and the adrenaline running through his body was doing him more good than a thousand days of rest.

The room that Mrs. Malfoy had let him have as a training area was _wonderful._ There were openings everywhere that might fire sudden curses or hexes, though nothing above a certain level of power. There were dummies that sometimes hung there limply on chains, for Harry to practice on, and sometimes came to life and tried to curse him in return. Sly hands rose up and tried to snatch his wand. Trapdoors opened beneath his feet. Obstacles rose, piled cushions and smooth curls of wood and piles of what looked to be legs taken from the couches, which could invite Harry to hide behind them or come to life themselves, depending on the room's temperament at the moment.

Harry had no idea how the house-elves had managed to create this so fast. Probably there was a training room somewhere in the house that they used as a prototype, or at least one that had existed, once. House-elves had good memories, Hermione had said. They could remember meals that their owner had ordered years ago, or the owner's ancestors. It was probably the same thing for rooms.

_Hermione._

He would find some way to get in contact with her. He _would_. Things were not going to stay the same as they currently were, because Harry would not let them.

He rolled and dodged and sprang, and came up spinning so fast that he made himself dizzy, but escaped the last seven hexes that danced out of nowhere and nothing. They splintered the wall and doorframe instead, and Harry stood there, hands pressed over his stomach, his body aching with his laughter.

"Potter?"

Harry turned and came down lightly as he lifted, his wand pointing in the right direction to guard him against any spell in the back. Malfoy, his hand still on the door, let his mouth fall open, and then ostentatiously raised both hands above his head.

"I only wanted to get our stories straight," he said. "But if you want me to leave you alone with your paranoia, then that can be arranged, too."

Harry shook his head, biting his lip so he didn't say something unfortunate. He had held his tongue around the goblins; keeping it around Malfoy shouldn't be that hard. Malfoy was part of the family that had helped him.

But the searing joy was gone, and he stepped mechanically aside from the room's next attempt to roast his legs. He only nodded to Malfoy, and said, "Yeah, that would be a good thing." He conjured a chair with a flick of his wand and gestured him towards it. "You can sit down, if you want."

"You won't?" Malfoy glared at him as though suspecting an insult. _And he has the gall to call me paranoid, _Harry thought idly.

"I prefer to stand," he said.

Malfoy worked his way over to the chair and dropped into it with a haughty lift of his chin, apparently waiting for Harry to say something unforgivable. Harry practiced in holding his tongue again, and constructed a series of spells in his head that he would use if he was dueling Malfoy, along with Malfoy's likely responses.

"Mother said you were thinking of a story about being my bodyguard," Malfoy muttered finally.

Harry wished, for a moment, that he could have been there to see the conversation between Malfoy and his mother. "Yes," he said. "It would give me a chance to leave the house, and give me an excuse for retaining my wand. The goblins were going to take it away from me, and they might find it suspicious that you let me still have it."

Malfoy stared at him. "And you didn't walk away from them?"

Harry snarled at him. He could feel the magic whispering to him, beneath his skin, not the magic he had used in his wand but the magic that could disintegrate ropes, turn bones to dust, make flesh and skin never have been. "What the fuck would _that _solve?" he demanded. "Ron made the same argument, as if walking away was _simple_, as if the goblins wouldn't track me down somehow. As if everyone wouldn't blame me for dissolving the economy."

"The goblins wouldn't have carried out that threat," Malfoy said.

"How sure are you?" Harry asked dryly. "Because people with more experience of the world than you have were saying they would."

Malfoy shook his head. "They don't have that much control. The money in the vaults belongs to wizards."

Harry gave him a nasty smile, remembering something Griphook had said to him during the negotiations that had resulted in his year of slavery. "Who owns the money? The person who has it. Do you think you would have got that money out of the vaults in time? That you could even find your way down to your vaults without a goblin to lead you? No, they had the means to make things a lot worse. I agreed to serve out the year because I knew that, and because I'd decided that would be the last time someone could take advantage of me. Then I would leave, and that would be the end of it."

* * *

"But you're still here," Draco pointed out. Potter was still trying to sound as though he was the champion of justice and reason, and Draco knew he just wasn't thinking it through. "Why did you stay if you hate everything so much?"

Potter only sighed and said, "Are you going to agree with the bodyguard story or not?"

Draco shook his head. "There has to be something else we can come up with. I can protect myself." He had promised his mother, he really had, but being back in Potter's irritating presence had made his skin itch to the point where he wanted to lash out to defend himself. And surely Potter had to make compromises, too, if having him in the family was going to work out at all.

Potter looked at him for a moment, and then narrowed his eyes. Suddenly invisible sticks were slapping Draco from every direction, breaking and beating against his ears and head and hair. Draco cried out and raised his hands to protect himself, but that only made the sticks hit his hands instead, making his palms and his knuckles sting. The blows never stopped.

Finally, Draco remembered. Magical attack, right, it wouldn't be delayed or blocked by something physical. He raised his wand and croaked out a Shield Charm, and it surrounded his head and hair. The blows stopped.

Draco swallowed and lifted his head. Potter watched him with a faint, sharp smile.

"And you think that you can protect yourself from me when you didn't even remember the right defense against a simple nonverbal spell?" Potter asked softly. "You think the bodyguard idea would be impossible?"

Draco scowled and stood up. All right, so he had failed one test, but that only meant he wanted to become better. "Teach me, then. If you think you're so good at dueling magic and defensive magic, teach me."

Potter smiled at him, calm and cold and dangerously near the Potter who had made Draco want to edge away in the bank yesterday. "What makes you think I'm a good teacher? Since I'm someone arrogant that you don't want to learn from anyway."

Draco sighed loudly, glad to notice that his hands weren't shaking as he lowered the Shield Charm. "I want to learn from you. To prevent myself from being laughed at. And if you teach me, I'll agree to the bodyguard story."

"Fine," Potter said.

Draco studied him. "You would just give in and agree?"

"You're angry at me for giving in and agreeing even when that's what you want," Potter said, in a voice as bored as stone. "I agreed because it might make time pass a little more pleasantly. And once this year is done, I'm gone, I told you."

"You said that was what would happen when you were the goblins' slave," Draco said, stepping back and raising his wand. He wasn't even sure why he was arguing, except that Potter made no sense and it was time someone told him so. "You don't have to do that now because you'll be our bodyguard instead and won't spend the year working in Gringotts."

Potter only frowned at him. "Who told you that was a reasonable dueling stance?"

"What?" Draco glanced down at the way he was automatically standing, his feet braced apart and his arms spread so that any spells he cast could cover as much of the area of his body as possible. "I don't know what you mean."

"I _mean_," Potter said, "that you're spread too wide. Someone could come in under or between or, hell, _through _your guard, and you wouldn't be able to stop them in time." A Stinging Hex erupted from his wand and crossed the distance between them faster than Draco had thought possible, exploding against Draco's chest and making him wince and hiss. "See? I don't think it's a good way to stand, is all."

"How would you suggest I do it, Master Duelist?"

Potter only smiled, as though Draco's best insults were so much foam that could break apart against his protection. "I would suggest that you stand like I do. Watch me." He brought his feet close together and turned himself a little, in a way Draco supposed would protect him, but thought would make it difficult to fire curses at anyone who wasn't standing to the side, too. "See?"

"You're all twisted around," Draco said.

"That's so I can change directions easily," Potter said. "Think of the most powerful spell you can that's not actually Dark, and cast it at me."

Draco raised his eyebrows, but the temptation felt too good to refuse. They were behind wards anyway, which meant that the goblins wouldn't be able to detect Potter using his wand, and the Ministry wouldn't be able to detect Draco using Dark Arts. He raised his wand, spent a few moments thinking and to throw Potter off-balance—which he had to admit didn't look as if it was working—and then said, "_Confercio_."

The curse opened on either side of Potter, although you had to know what to look for, and Draco would probably have seen it as a heat shimmer if he didn't know what was coming. Then the sides slammed together, trying to compress Potter into a small ball of flesh and bone.

Except Potter wasn't there. His silly-looking stance had changed into a nimble leap, and he was out of the spell before it had the chance to gather its full force. Draco opened his mouth to change its direction and send it after Potter before the power faded completely, but Potter was already busy with his own spell.

"_Decedes_."

Before Draco could recognize the spell, he felt it grip his legs, especially his hips. He turned around and began marching before he could think about it, straight towards the door of the room he'd come in by.

Draco struggled madly against it, throwing his will at the magic, before he realized where he was going wrong. This wasn't like the Imperius Curse, something that would break if you only had the mental strength. This was a pure command to his muscles, and he couldn't stop it without breaking the actual spell.

He snapped out a _Finite, _and then he concentrated and tried to make his will well out through his skin, a tactic that had worked more than once before when he wanted to block a Dark spell another Death Eater was using.

It didn't work this time. His legs continued to march, and Draco knew that if he didn't watch out, he would find himself outside the door, and then he would probably never be able to get back into the room. Potter wouldn't want to duel with someone who couldn't guard himself against such a simple spell.

He laid his wand against his legs, envisioned the way he wanted to stand when he stopped walking—the "reasonable dueling stance" that Potter had talked about—and this time poured his will into the spell he was casting instead of just trying to exercise it. "_Finite Incantatem_," he whispered, and the words made his lips tingle.

The sharpness of the magic made him stumble. It seemed to nip at his heels and his hips, and he wondered what Potter would say if he fell flat on his face. Putting out his hands to possibly catch himself on the wall, it took him a moment to realize that he had stopped walking.

"Very good," Potter said behind him, so calm and cool Draco could hardly believe it was him, and couldn't hear any emotion in his voice at all. "It took me ten minutes to break that spell the first time someone cast it on me."

Draco shook his head, turning around. "I don't think you should flatter me if we're going to be actually training together," he said.

"I'm not flattering you," Potter said, peering at him. "It really did take me ten minutes the first time. I tend to lose my temper, though. And since the war, I can just fling my magic around. That makes focusing the way you have to do on that spell less of an option for me." The same danger was glowing in his eyes that Draco had seen in the great cavern at Gringotts.

Draco nodded cautiously. Then he cast, while Potter was facing him open and unguarded and wouldn't be expecting it. "_Smaragdus!_"

The burst of blinding emerald light that was supposed to happen with that spell didn't have a chance to shine before the wave of Potter's wand dimmed it. He simply held Draco's eyes, though, and cocked his head a little. "I'm _never _unguarded," he said. "Don't think it."

Draco felt a crawling shiver come up his spine. He couldn't claim the same, even though he had lived through the same war—and probably worse dangers, with the Dark Lord _right in his house—_that Potter had.

For now, he coughed and brought his wand up. "What was that dueling stance you were going to show me again?"


	4. Unfinished Business

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_Chapter Four—Unfinished Business_

Harry paused where he was, one hand still lifted to knock on the door in front of him. He had been supposed to meet Narcissa in one of the small sitting rooms for a chat at noon, but the door was partially open, and he could hear voices coming from behind it—Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy's voices.

Harry stepped back and cast a _Tempus _Charm, nonverbally. It told him that he still had another ten minutes before Narcissa would probably think he was late. He leaned on the wall and listened, quietly, ready to move if he had to so he could be inside the room before anyone would think he was eavesdropping.

"Draco told me what you said." By the sound of it, Lucius was pacing around the room, and his robe was rustling and sliding over most of the furniture. Harry held his breath and listened, but heard no crack of delicate ivory knickknacks falling to the floor. He exhaled, disappointed. "And there's no reason that we have to put our son to inconvenience being nice to the boy."

"We must do what is gracious," Narcissa said calmly. "I told you that already, Lucius. I _did _think you might have agreed when you agreed to give up your vault."

"That was a necessary gesture," Lucius said. "Not one I would have done without the life-debts."

"True graciousness is what one will do outside of necessity" Narcissa said, sounding as if she was quoting something. "Are you going to ignore Harry for a year, Lucius? What will that do to your dignity, not to mention your ability to go about your own house? I know you. You would resent Mr. Potter for it, and come to restrict yourself to a few rooms. Such a wonderful example for our son."

Lucius came to a stop, from the sound of it. Harry resisted the urge to move closer to the door and peek through the gap, though. They would probably hear him. "I have no idea how to get along with him, Narcissa," Lucius whispered harshly. "He lost me a house-elf, and I tried to resurrect the Dark Lord from one of his little friends."

Harry closed his eyes. It was do that, or burst into the room and scream at Lucius until he was hoarse for acting as though those two things were _equivalent._

"Yes, and you tried to curse him in the Department of Mysteries, and then he got rid of your Lord for you, I know the whole sorry tale," Narcissa said, sounding impatient with said sorry tale. "That doesn't have to do anything to dictate the way you behave now."

"Of course it does—"

"No, Lucius, it does not." From the sounds _now, _Narcissa had stood up, and Harry got ready to dive back from the door if she came towards it, but she only stopped walking a few seconds later. Harry envisioned her in front of Lucius, her hands clasping his shoulders and her eyes looking deeply into his, though of course he had no real idea what they would look like together. "You can do this," he heard Narcissa whisper. "You can change things. You can be a new man. I believe in you."

There was silence, and Harry retreated from the door. He shouldn't have listened to _that _much, he thought, but he deserved to know what they were planning to do about him, how they were planning to treat him.

He waited for a count of fifty, which he thought would give them enough time to finish—whatever they were doing. Then he marched up to the door, and knocked.

He heard a shuffling sound and a throat-clearing sound, and tried not to picture the way they might have sprung apart from each other, because it was simply too embarrassing. He stared at the wood of the door instead, and rather desperately studied the bright brass of the knob, and the plate around the keyhole, and then Lucius opened the door.

They stared at each other for what felt like a count of endless heartbeats, and was probably twenty seconds. Lucius's lip kept trembling like he wanted to curl it. Harry held still.

"Come in, Harry," Narcissa said, gently, and Lucius stepped back so that Harry could see into the room. At least Narcissa didn't look as though she'd been kissing Lucius, or running her fingers through his hair, or something. She smiled and extended a hand to him, and Harry went up and shook it.

Lucius made a little snorting sound. Harry shrugged. Presumably he'd been supposed to kiss it. Well, he wasn't pure-blood, he didn't know these things.

"If we could sit down?" Narcissa nodded towards the far end of the couch. Harry sat down on it, and Lucius took a seat on a chair at an angle to him. Narcissa sighed, at one of them or both, and sat down next to Harry.

"We agreed that you could pretend to be our bodyguard outside the Manor," Narcissa told him. "The training room is adequate?"

Lucius's glare intensified when she talked about that, as though he didn't approve of a room put aside to let Harry train at all. Harry wondered if he would feel differently if he knew Draco was using it, too. Then he tried to ignore Lucius altogether as he responded to Narcissa. "More than adequate, thank you."

Narcissa nodded. "The goblins will expect to see some kind of slave labor for us to put you to. But with the house-elves, having you clean things, or work in the kitchens or gardens, doesn't seem like enough."

Harry nodded, bracing himself. "Is this where you tell me that I need to wait on you hand and foot? Or at least on the days when the goblins visit?"

Narcissa blinked at him, looking a little lost. She opened her mouth, then cocked her head and said, "I would have left it alone, but you spoke as though it was a settled thing, so I must admit to curiosity. Why did your mind leap to that option first, Harry?"

_ Because it's the sort of thing I would have thought you'd do if you meant this slavery bit. Because it's the sort of thing my relatives would have loved to have me do, if they weren't too anxious about my freakishness rubbing off on them._

But those were unacceptable answers, so Harry sat up straighter and shrugged. "It seems to be the only thing the house-elves don't do for you," he said.

Narcissa shot a glance at Lucius, but Harry had no idea what message she meant Lucius to take from that; it seemed only to make him glare all the harder. Then she shook her head. "I was thinking of glamours instead. And decorative chains."

Harry blinked. "Goblins know metal. Are we going to be able to fool them if the chains aren't heavy?"

Narcissa smiled. "They're also contemptuous of wizard magic. Glamour the chains enough, to look like heavy iron, and _crude _iron, and I think they're likely to ignore the spells wound about them as not worthy of their attention."

Harry leaned forwards as he considered that. Then he said, "And what would you want me to do for you on the days the goblins visited? Serve the food? Kneel down and have you use my head for a table?"

"What tales _have _you been reading?" Narcissa brushed a hand through her pale hair. "Those novels that purport to tell the truth about how pure-bloods once treated captured Muggles? I can assure you those are nothing but lies." She paused exactly the right amount of time, then added, "No pure-blood of those times could have borne touching a Muggle that closely, or eating from a plate that had touched their scalps."

Harry laughed, because she had meant him to, and because it was funny, and because he could feel Lucius quivering with suppressed indignation. "All right," he said. "So something else. The serving?"

Narcissa nodded. "I think that you should scowl as much as you can, and clink the chains, and resist at least one order, so Lucius can pretend to blast you with the Cruciatus."

Harry turned to look warily at Lucius. He still remembered the man standing in the graveyard when Voldemort had _actually _cast it on him, and that memory made the words pop out of his lips before he thought about them. "Are you sure that he can pretend? That he won't cast it for real?"

Freezing silence from Lucius's direction—and freezing silence from in front of him, Harry realized, with a sinking heart. He turned back around. Narcissa was sitting up with her lips pinched shut and her hands folded in her lap, looking straight at him with a more than disappointed sheen in her eyes.

"I _did _think you had come to trust us more than that," she said quietly.

Harry sighed and responded as bluntly as he could, because that was what he had to do. "I trust you more than that. Not your husband. Draco is—okay. But Lucius and I have unfinished business between us." He turned to look at Lucius. "Don't we?"

* * *

The _brat._

Lucius wanted to react with more force than that, wanted to snap and snarl and tear. It had been his first reaction when someone insulted him ever since he was a boy.

But his father had trained the immediate resorting to that reaction out of him at the same age. So now Narcissa's eye bent on him reminded him of that training, and what they might stand to lose if they didn't show Potter that they shared _some _common ground with him.

Lucius ground his teeth for a moment. Then he nodded slowly and said, "Yes. We do. I am not sure what you can do to compensate me for the loss of my house-elf, and I am not sure which price you want for the amount of danger I put your friend in."

To his surprise, Potter's teeth flashed in what looked like a grin. Lucius had expected simply a growl at the reference to Arthur Weasley's youngest child. Instead, Potter leaned forwards and said, "You were willing to give up a vault to see me under your control instead of the goblins'. No one is going to question it if you take out a certain new sum of money, supposedly for the wards that you need to control me when I have my wand in hand."

Lucius frowned. "To what end will the money go?"

"Find out the value of a house-elf," Potter said. He looked as though he was standing in front of a classroom, the way he'd risen to his feet and put his hands on his hips. Narcissa's slight smile said that she wasn't inclined to interfere, so Lucius had to sit there and listen. "I'm sure there must be some kind of monetary value attached to them."

"Priceless, now," Lucius said tightly.

"More so than a human life?"

Lucius blinked. Then he said, "You are talking about the payment of a weregild." The idea intrigued him, although it had been a century and more since anyone in the Malfoy family had paid one. They had mostly gone out of fashion along with the sorts of duels that tended to kill or incapacitate someone so badly that the payment was necessary.

"If that's what they're called." Potter was supremely arrogant in his indifference to the matter of the price. Lucius felt his muscles coil with tension—

And admiration. Someone who declared himself beyond all laws like that, someone who turned his back on the accepted customs of law and social convention, was only an outcast and someone to sneer down one's nose at until he had the power to enforce his will, at which point he became a Dark Lord. Or at least a wizard whose favor could be courted.

That Potter, under sentence of slavery, could somehow contrive to be someone like this hooked Lucius more powerfully than the idea of the weregild had. He wondered what would happen if Potter emerged from this year of slavery with his formidable will intact.

Someone worth courting, indeed. Someone who might as well have kindly feelings towards the family who had sheltered him.

"And the amount of money that a house-elf is worth would be subtracted from the weregild of a human life?" he asked, although he already knew where Potter's thoughts were tending, and it seemed as if he should have from the time those intense green eyes focused on him.

"Yes, exactly," Potter said, glaring at him, as though he suspected Lucius would renege on him even when he had come this far with feeling out what Potter wanted.

Lucius held up a hand to gentle him, and felt some strength return to him when Potter settled back on his heels instead of striking out. Yes, this could work. "Then I agree to the terms. Provided that we can consult some of the books in my library as well as the more recent tomes of law that might be in the Ministry libraries, and determine what the worth of property balanced against a life is."

Potter blinked, and then nodded. "All right. When you give me whatever amount of money it is, then you'll forgive me for having freed Dobby, and I'll forgive you for having put the diary in Ginny's cauldron."

Lucius might have objected to this framing of the debate, but that was in a different lifetime, one where putting the diary in the cauldron had worked out and the Dark Lord stood before him. He nodded. "I will resign my disdain towards you, and speak to your cordially. I ask that you do the same with me, and not hold my actions against my son."

Potter rolled his eyes. "There's other things that I can hold against Draco than your actions. He had some stupidities all his own, at Hogwarts." Lucius refrained from asking, interesting as it would be to hear Potter's side of some of those stories. It wasn't really what they were here for at the moment. "But he and I have come to a sort of truce now, so that's all right."

"Does that mean that you will trust us more now?" Narcissa, voice deep and soothing as always.

Potter turned to face her, to consider her. Lucius remembered him saying that he trusted her, and concealed a smile. Potter was not naïve to do so, not exactly, as Narcissa had his wishes most at heart of anyone in the family right now, Lucius knew. But it was interesting that he turned instinctively to her, as Lucius did. She would probably exert the same gentle influence over Potter as she did over them, before long.

"I hope I can," Potter said. "But I don't think we can know for certain until the goblins visit the first time."

Narcissa nodded. "We had the promise them they could come whenever they liked, but it might be wise to arrange a visit of our own initiative, so we can show them something we've prepared."

Potter grimaced, but nodded. "All right. Glamours of chains. The idea that I'm a bodyguard and that's the only reason I've been allowed to retain my wand. What else should we come up with?"

Lucius stood up and absented himself from the room as Narcissa and Potter began to discuss the details of the con they would create. In other times, with an ally he trusted more, he would have involved himself in the discussion, but he trusted his wife absolutely, and his presence would be unwelcome to Potter right now.

He would show his good will and understanding, rather, by going to research the matter of the weregild, and learning how much he needed to pay to settle the debt.

His stride lengthened, and he found himself smiling. A traditional, non-traditional way to settle the debt. Potter's friends might find it repulsive, and Lucius's associates certainly would have, but Potter had more good sense than Lucius had credited him with.


	5. Kneeling

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_Chapter Five—Kneeling _

Draco tried not to twitch as the goblins marched into the Manor.

It was the way they walked as though they _owned _everything. They looked around, and nodded at the marble walls and the gilded mirrors as though they were old friends. They considered the portrait frames, and their fingers and claws rapped together. They were probably thinking about taking the portraits _out _of those frames, Draco thought, staring straight ahead but catching more than enough from the corner of his eye, and selling the frames for good money while burning the portraits.

Because when had goblins ever cared about what humans wanted?

"Mistress Malfoy," said the one in the lead, whom Draco thought was the goblin his father had bought Potter from. He bowed over Narcissa's hand. Draco could see nothing in her face but the lovely, motionless mask that she always wore whenever someone visiting made a mess at the table. _Come to think of it, she hasn't looked at Potter that way once since he arrived here. _"Thank you for inviting us." The goblin straightened up and leered, though Draco had to admit that ordinary smiles would probably look like leers on the mouth that toothy. "Could we see the prisoner now?"

His mother looked convincingly blank for a moment, then smiled. "The slave. Of course. I fear that's our more common name for him." For a moment, she turned her head to lock eyes with his father, who stood on the other side of the entrance hall with his cane supporting him. "We tend to think of prisoners somewhat differently."

Lucius nodded. Draco hadn't been trusted with a part in this charade because his parents didn't think he could lie well enough, so he just remained silent, the obedient son who would think whatever his pure-blood mother and father told him.

Narcissa clapped her hands, and Ren appeared. "Summon the slave," she said idly, and guided the goblins through the entrance hall, down the corridor, towards a sitting room where everything looked appropriately expensive without actually being so. All four who had come tottered after her eagerly.

Draco relaxed with a _whoosh _of breath, and then caught his father's warning eye and tensed again.

"We cannot relax yet," Lucius whispered harshly. "There is no saying but one of them will notice."

Draco nodded carefully, but he _did _have to say, "How do you know that Potter's going to be able to keep up his end? I have more talent at acting than he does."

His father gained that strange, lit-from-behind smile that he wore lately when Draco mentioned Potter. "I think that you will be surprised in him. That young man is stronger than you think."

_Than _you _think, not than _we _think, _Draco thought crossly. He wished he'd been present at whatever meeting or discussion Potter had been at with his parents a week ago, to make them think that Potter was actually impressive.

But he hadn't been, and right now he could do nothing but troop after the goblins, Lucius coming behind him, leaning far more heavily on the cane than he was used to. They had to do this to keep up the charade of the story about needing Potter for protection. Draco understood that. But he still felt old, dull, bubbling resentment rising in him, and kept his head turned away from the stairs when he heard the clank of chains.

Then he heard his father catch his breath in a sharp exclamation, and turned his head despite himself.

Potter was coming down the center of the staircase, his face set in a pout that made Draco instinctively want to recoil. He wore chains that Draco knew were at least part glamour, but they swayed and sang and clanked with a convincing sound. Potter's lip pushed out further when he saw Lucius and Draco waiting for him, and he shook his head and sat down in the middle of the stairs, folding his arms.

Draco saw motion ahead, and realized that his mother had paused in front of the sitting room. There was a large mirror on the wall opposite its door that reflected the staircase, and thus the goblins could watch Potter in "privacy." They were exchanging glances now, their fangs bared where their lips writhed back.

"Come, slave," Lucius said. Draco had to admit that he wouldn't have been able to muster that particular voice, so haughty and repressive. He was too used to meeting Potter on equal grounds. "We have visitors who want to see you."

Potter pushed his lip further out, until it could have supported a continent with ease. "I'm _tired_," he whined. "I don't _want _to."

Lucius stepped forwards and lifted his cane a little.

Potter shrank and tucked his hands over his head. He was panting now, and his voice was soft and panicked in a way that made Draco's spine prickle. "Please don't, master. Please don't hit me again. I'll be ever so good."

Lucius lowered the cane and leaned on it, shaking his head in a way that seemed to convey even to Draco how tired dealing with a rebellious slave made him. "Then _come_," he said. "I will not tell you again."

Potter scurried down the stairs with his head bowed. He passed within a meter of Draco, and Draco didn't think he would have recognized him if not for knowing him so long. Every line of his body screamed subservience, and he scraped and bowed endlessly as Lucius herded him into the middle of the corridor. The scraping and bowing didn't look fake, either or at least Draco didn't think they did. They looked like the kinds of things Draco would have done when the Dark Lord was living in the Manor.

He winced a little as he thought about that, and suddenly some of Potter's resistance to this plan began to make sense to him. _Would I have wanted to live with _him_ forever? Well, Potter doesn't want to please the goblins forever._

His father caught Draco's eye and nodded sternly down the corridor. Draco settled his shoulders, reminded himself that Potter _had _agreed to play this part for however long it was necessary, and then strutted forwards. Potter didn't seem to notice him, but Draco aimed a kick at the back of his knee, and Potter whimpered and knelt.

"I noticed that you sneaked a look at me this morning," Draco said, bending down to whisper into Potter's ear, although he was sure sensitive goblin ears would still pick it up. "You aren't to do that again, no matter _how _many times you dress me. Do you understand?"

"Master." Potter bowed deeply enough that his fringe brushed the floor, and it didn't look ironic, again.

Draco licked his lips, surprised and revolted by the unnecessarily metallic taste on them, and moved back with a haughty, "See that it doesn't," that surprised even him. He swept into the sitting room, past the stunned goblins. He wanted to look over his shoulder and see whether Potter scraped to them, too, but he couldn't manage it at the moment.

There was a time when he would have thought his dearest wish was to see Potter kneeling to him, a time when he would have asked for that as a gift from the Dark Lord if he hadn't known that his Lord had more delicious things in mind for Potter.

_But there was a time when I loved and believed in the Dark Lord, too._

* * *

Harry badly wanted to throw up, especially when he noticed that two of the goblins among the group of them in the Manor's corridor were the ones who had eagerly anticipated his imprisonment in Gringotts because they had "special" jobs for him.

But he had made promises, and he would put the Malfoys at risk, or at least their money, if he came this far and then refused to go further. Besides, this was only one more indignity to endure before he left the wizarding world. Soon he would be in a place where people kept their money in ordinary banks and thought of goblins as fairy tales to frighten children.

So he walked, and flung himself down at Lucius's feet in his chains, keeping his head bowed. He didn't even look up or flinch when Lucius's hand buried itself in the hair at the back of his neck, although he _hated _that.

"You have behaved well, slave," Lucius said. "You may lick the tip of my cane." And the tip appeared in front of Harry.

They hadn't discussed this part, and Harry felt that terrible temptation welling up in him again that had been there from the first time the goblins pushed their price. He knew what his magic could do. Reach out, touch Lucius, and concentrate, and fabric would dissolve to its basest fibers, skin would slough from bone, bone would turn to ash…

_And that's disgusting, and not something I want other people to associate with me. I want to walk away in pride, not driven be off by people screaming in terror._

So Harry kept his magic and his hands to himself, and simply shivered, and extended his tongue. The floors around the Manor were kept impeccably clean, thanks to the house-elves. Harry doubted it would really taste worse than some of the things he had eaten at the Dursleys'.

It didn't. The cane tasted like smooth wood and a harder substance that Harry suspected was the ebony that sheathed it, and in any case, Lucius pulled it away the moment Harry had taken a single firm lick.

"I find it best to limit the rewards that our slave has," Lucius remarked, lounging back on the couch and smiling at the goblins. "That way, he cannot grow too used to his status and start thinking of himself as above us all, as above his _crimes. _And we must teach him that riding a dragon out of Gringotts is a crime, must we not?"

The goblins laughed, a sound like pans clashing, and Griphook said something that Harry knew he couldn't listen to, because it would make him kill. So he huddled on the floor next to Lucius's boots, and didn't flinch when Lucius petted his neck or his scar, or let his hand fondle the middle of Harry's back in a way that probably looked precariously exciting to the goblins.

He would get through this. He would always get through this, and the Malfoys had spared him some of the things he might have had to do in the goblins' power.

But Merlin, he would be glad when this visit was over.

* * *

Draco was progressing rapidly from the revelation that he wouldn't have wanted the Dark Lord to make Potter kneel, surprising enough in and of itself, to the one that said he didn't want to see Potter kneeling to _anyone_.

He didn't like it. It changed things, and he didn't think that he wanted to be the kind of person who would change that much, whose mind _could _be changed by the sight of something as simple as a man falling on his knees. Or by the feel of Potter's magic, constricted around him and breathing barely more than a vampire.

It was…

The thing, Draco thought wretchedly as the goblins prated on and his parents fed them story about story about the vague but lurid things that Potter supposedly did for them, was that Potter had always stood up to him. _Stood_. He hadn't been impressed by Draco's parents. He had laughed at Draco's claims to be superior based on blood. He had rolled his eyes and snorted in the right places, and he had turned his back and walked away during the times when Draco had most badly wanted him to bow.

He had been a rival when Draco had most needed him, loathe though he was to think that he _really _needed one. A rival stood and fought and panted and only kneeled because you made him.

It was Potter's desire for freedom that bent him now, that and the desire to fall into place and go along with the plan. Nothing Draco had done. Nothing the Dark Lord had done, even. It was an interference from people who felt wronged by Potter, but not people who had been rivals with him, who had quested after the Snitch with him, who had argued over House points and taunted him about his parents.

It was _wrong_.

Draco didn't plan to explain this to anyone, because he knew his parents would reprimand him for being so incoherent and Potter had already proven that he didn't understand the psychology of rivalry when Draco had tried to talk to him in the training room. But what mattered most of all was that this revelation was his own, and private, and no law said that he needed to share everything he thought with everybody.

His Aunt Bellatrix had thought he did. The Dark Lord had wanted to know every thought that went through a Malfoy's head. Maybe he even deserved to know the thoughts of the people he had Marked, by right of strength in Legilimency if nothing else.

But no one was going to take Draco's thoughts about Potter away.

And if a Malfoy bowed to no one, then a Malfoy's slave should only bow because a Malfoy had made him.

* * *

The visit was coming to an end. Harry could tell by the way the goblins shuffled their feet and cleared their throats, sounds familiar to him from visits at the Dursleys' when Uncle Vernon's clients would do the same things, and Harry listened to them from the cupboard. Lucius and Narcissa were probably running out of stories to tell them, at that.

_Good. _Harry could feel the insinuations and innuendos layered like slime over his skin. He wanted a bath.

"Mistress Malfoy…"

That was Griphook, one of the whiniest, as though he thought Harry owed him something for rescuing him from Malfoy Manor, or doing that and then tricking him. Harry stiffened with his eyes on the floor. Griphook would notice the gesture, of course, and that would only increase the price of whatever demand he was about to make.

"Yes, Master Griphook?" Narcissa was so cool and gentle that Harry could hear no contempt in her tone, and he knew what to look for. He doubted that Griphook would notice. "Was there something?"

"We never did get the full benefit of his services, and it sounds like he's an exceptional slave," Griphook said. "Would it be too much to require him to kiss our feet?"

Harry felt the revulsion burst out shining anew in him. He had barely managed to kiss Lucius's cane, and he thought he knew what would happen if he touched the goblins right now. His hands were burning, and as he watched, small, dark puddles spread out from them across the floor. Luckily, it was made of marble, and Harry could do nothing more than pit it a little, as the power in him reached out in search of organic material.

"Well, I don't know," said Narcissa, and her voice had not changed, except that now it had taken on rather more of a tone of serious consideration. "We use that as a reward, you see, and I'm not sure he deserves it. Being allowed to kiss Lucius's cane is more than he could have expected today, already."

Harry began to breathe again. Narcissa might have just prevented a series of murders that would have shaken the world and which Harry would have regretted, but was not sure that he could have stopped.

"Oh, in _that _case." Griphook sipped at his tea and set the cup down on the table. "In that case," he repeated, standing up, "may I commend you on your excellent and unusual discipline, Mistress Narcissa? Of course, it sounds as though some disrespect remains to be extracted from him, if that scene we witnessed on the staircase is any indication. Please do let us know if you require any help in that endeavor."

"Oh, we will," Narcissa said, and her voice was a thing of deep, cold beauty, that Harry thought he might have admired under other circumstances, and which only made the things she had hinted about him worse. "We more than appreciate it."

There came a shaking of hands, and the goblins bending down to examine him and the chains before they left. Harry bore it, his arms shaking with what they might assume was fear, but which Narcissa would know was the need to lash out.

Finally, they were through the front door and away. Harry rose to his feet and reached out to rip the chains off.

The glamours vanished at the same moment as the real chains they were built on unlocked and dropped to the floor. Narcissa Vanished them and raised an eyebrow at Harry. "Why don't you go to your room for a while, dear?"

Harry nodded shortly, and left. He couldn't thank them right now. He hoped they would understand.


	6. Dealing and Dueling

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—Dealing and Dueling_

"You can't sulk in here forever."

Draco made his voice as bold and challenging as he could. In truth, he was a little unnerved that there were no wards on Potter's rooms to keep him out. That didn't seem like something his mother would have forgotten, so instead Potter had left them down. Draco didn't know why.

"I know," Potter said, in an absolutely flat voice, his eyes on the ceiling. He lay on his back in the middle of the bed, and it made Draco's skin prickle with irritation to see how his hands lay beside him, flat and helpless, not even knotting into fists. "I know it's horrible. I'll be down tomorrow."

And Potter turned his head away and closed his eyes.

As far as Draco was concerned, that tore it.

He marched across the floor towards Potter, who never seemed to notice him coming. He grabbed his shoulder and shook it, hard.

Potter rolled back towards him and shot his own hand out. Draco tried to gasp around the wand suddenly poking into his throat, but he couldn't. His breath stuck, and he couldn't shake his head or speak the scornful words he wanted.

"You bought me to play the part of a slave," Potter said flatly. "That's all well and good. I owe you a debt of gratitude. But I didn't realize until today how hard it would be to play that part. I think you could at least have the _courtesy _to let me have some time to come to terms with it, instead of intruding and yelling at me."

Draco managed to swallow. Then he said, "You don't understand. I think that you might get stuck like this forever. I'm just intervening to make sure you don't. That you'll remember there's a world outside this room, and you'll have to come back and be part of it sometime."

Potter continued to examine him. Draco stared back. What he had spoken was the truth, strange though it might seem to both Potter and his father to hear that. Draco thought his mother would understand, though.

Then Potter shook his head and said, "I've dealt with shocks like this before. The prophecy and the Parseltongue and Sirius and—oh, lots of others. I can get used to it, but it takes me time. Give me that time, and I can master it." He gave Draco a tired smile that seemed to surprise him almost as much as it did Draco, from the way his eyes crossed a moment later. "But you have to give me that time in quiet."

Draco thought about it for a minute, then nodded. As long he had _some _assurance that Potter would emerge from his rooms again and stand up to him, then he could give Potter the time he needed now.

"All right," he said. "As long as you come down tomorrow. And as long as you eat a full meal when Ren brings it to you."

"What are you, my keeper?" Potter asked, but his voice was already drowsy, his muscles relaxing. Draco rejoiced to see it. Potter had been too tense before, too caught up in the sick tension that could turn him into the killing predator Draco had seen in the bank, and again on the floor of his parents' drawing room. "Ren will make sure I eat it, because he'll whine until I do, otherwise." He paused suddenly, and gave Draco a considering look. "Muggles think pets get to act like their masters, after a while. I wonder if the same thing happens between wizards and house-elves?"

Draco made an appropriate spluttering noise, though more because Potter expected it than because he felt it. He found the insinuation less outrageous than the feeling that had passed through him as he watched Potter kneeling at his father's feet. Nothing would surprise him again for a while, he thought, until he had regrown the nerves that that sight had seared.

"Right," Potter said, and his face had relaxed, too, his hands falling open on the bed. He hesitated, then added, "Thanks, Malfoy. See you tomorrow."

Draco nodded and retreated, closing the door behind him. After a moment, he put up a privacy ward on it, since Potter was obviously too much of an idiot to do it himself.

He walked away with a spring in his step, to the training room, where he practiced some of the spells that Potter had successfully used against him this past week. He wanted to spread some of the surprise around when Potter felt well enough to come out of his confinement.

* * *

Harry came down the stairs slowly. He'd already eaten breakfast in his rooms, like dinner last night, but Ren had told him that Lucius wanted to see him. Without the excuse of a meal, Harry wondered what for.

Lucius stood at the bottom of the stairs, in fact, the cane casually in his hand, examining one of the portraits with a frown on his face that made Harry wonder if some Muggle ancestor had crept in by mistake. Harry halted. It was the sight of the cane. It made it hard to move forwards, hard to catch his breath.

Lucius turned around, saw him, and Vanished the cane after a long look at Harry. Harry sighed. He wondered if he should regret becoming so transparent to the Malfoys, and then decided that he didn't. If it led to them caring for his comfort instead of him just having to suffer because they didn't notice and he wouldn't betray his weakness to them, then that would make him stronger in the future, by saving his strength for things that really mattered.

"Come to my study," Lucius said. He began to walk down the corridor, taking it for granted that Harry would follow. Harry rolled his eyes, and did, because it wasn't worth making a fuss about.

The study was so dark that Harry wished for a lamp other than the small one Lucius had lit on his desk. He couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't stumble over the small rugs on the floor or the sharp corners of the bookshelves otherwise. Somehow, though, he made it to the chair that sat in the middle of a brown-and-red rug, in front of Lucius's desk, and took his seat with his hands folded in his lap. His heart was still beating faster than it should have from such a short walk, and he found it hard to look Lucius in the eye.

The man was no Narcissa.

"I have looked up the amounts of the weregilds paid in the past when someone killed a member of a prominent pure-blood family, as well as what a trained house-elf was worth," Lucius said briskly, pulling the book in front of him open. Harry squinted, but the book was as dark as anything else in the room, bound in aged leather. If there was a title on the spine, or an author's name, it had long ago been reduced to flakes of gilt. "The weregilds ranged in the amount of a thousand Galleons, slightly less than that if the victim was only crippled instead of killed. I think such an amount would be appropriate, don't you, since the girl escaped in the end?" He looked up.

Harry stared back into his face, and bit his tongue on what he wanted to say. _This is comfortable for him. Thinking of people in terms of money. It makes it possible for him to deal with things that he would have no means to deal with otherwise, because they would be…too real, or something. Who the hell knows? _

Anyway, Harry had agreed to let this go as far as it had, so it would be hypocritical of him to scold Lucius now for thinking of Ginny's life in those terms. He cleared his throat, and said, "She only escaped because I rescued her, not because the diary you gave her let her go, or something."

"Then she owes you a life-debt," Lucius said, and his eyes shone as he made a quick stroke across the parchment in front of him with a quill. "That makes her life further valuable to you, and exempts me from paying as much as I would have if she were crippled. Now, subtracting the amount that you owe me for my elf, I end up with two hundred Galleons. Is that fair?" He sat back and looked at Harry.

_I could refuse, _Harry thought, but he didn't want to. This was the man who had helped him to play out a successful deception yesterday, and given up one of his vaults to secure Harry's freedom—well, eventual freedom—even if that was by way of paying back a life-debt. Harry nodded, and let it go.

"Good." Lucius twirled the quill between his fingers. "We must think of a different deception, one that will allow you to communicate with your friends and venture outside the Manor on occasion. I think you will suffer without those."

Harry blinked. Then he reminded himself where Lucius was coming from. It wasn't that a sudden fit of compassion had overcome him; it was that Harry not having those things made Harry act in ways that inconvenienced Lucius, and might do more than inconvenience him when it came to the goblins.

"Yes, I will," Harry said. "I thought that having my messages taken by some bird other than an owl would help with the deception."

Lucius smiled, his eyes alight. "I know where one can acquire trained ravens—trained, as well, in making it seem as though their deliveries do not happen. Please allow me to buy one and present it as a gift to you."

Harry sighed out a little. "Fine. And venturing outside?"

"The Manor's wards cannot be turned opaque," Lucius said, standing. "A condition of the Ministry's allowing us to keep them at all, after the trial. But I may think of something else. In the meantime, why don't you go practice dueling with my son? He was whining enough about it last night that I don't want to listen to any more of it."

Harry blinked a little at the abrupt dismissal, but part of him was grateful for it, too. He and Lucius weren't friends, and it was good to remember that when he seemed inclined to forget it. He stood up, swayed a little, put his hands on the desk to brace himself, and said, "You're being generous."

"Narcissa reminded me that I should be."

Harry nodded back, and left the study under his own power, which was far better than being propelled out of it, the way he had assumed he would be if he had any sort of private conversation with Lucius.

And he didn't have far to walk before he stumbled over Draco, lurking in the corridor with an air of nonchalance that Harry could have told him didn't look any better on him than it did on a house-elf. _He and Ren are definitely alike, _Harry thought, as he nodded to Draco.

"Do you want to go practice?" he asked.

Draco's face lit up. Harry blinked. That seemed a reaction out of all proportion to the request.

Then he shook his head. _I asked him, instead of making him ask. I think he likes that. _

And Harry liked seeing him that way. Far better than he liked seeing Malfoy sulky or insulting him, at least. When Draco said something in a low, grateful tone, Harry nodded to him and began walking towards the practice room. His head still had a few cobwebs from his encounter with Lucius, and the scene last night. He would do better when he was dueling, and pumping adrenaline through his muscles.

* * *

Potter was _incredibly _good at dueling.

Draco sometimes looked at him and despaired that he would ever be good—mostly when he was trying to recover his breath from one of Potter's spells. But then he remembered who he had teaching him, and took heart.

Of course, that was right before Potter hit him with a complicated spell that made him start breathing as though someone had kicked him in the solar plexus, and he had to spend the next five minutes bent over while Potter explained how to counter it.

_He's good at teaching, too, _Draco had to admit, as he watched him out of the corner of his eye. Potter didn't seem to comprehend that Draco might resent him for succeeding in a duel. He simply explained what had gone wrong, with enough gentle, graceful gestures that Draco could imagine what it would be like when _he _could hit the spell back at Potter with enough skill to leave him lying flat on the floor.

_Maybe. I haven't exactly got to that point yet._

But neither was he defeated, and when he managed to counter Potter's _Fractas _with a shield that held up under it instead of splitting into pieces, he won another reward. Potter gave him a slow, genuine smile that seemed to hold nothing in reserve. Draco stared, dazzled, before he became aware that he _was _staring, and guiltily averted his eyes.

"Very good," Potter said. "I think you're really concentrating now, and that makes up for that slipshod technique that so many people pick up because they're trying to be flashy, and don't have the first idea of how to do it."

"Including some you trained with?" Draco guessed.

Potter gave him a quick nod. "There are _so _many people who care more about how they _look _when they're throwing a spell than about how the spell lands," he complained, tossing his fringe out of his eyes. Draco wondered why he didn't just cut his hair, if it annoyed him so much, but that wasn't his business. Learning from Potter was. "There's just not enough room for them in a serious training program."

"You'll revolutionize the Aurors when you go there," Draco predicted. "You probably already know more than half the teachers."

Potter's face froze for a moment, while his magic writhed around him like a snake on fire, and then he shook his head. "Maybe I would, if I was going to go there," he muttered.

Draco blinked. "You're still seriously thinking about leaving the wizarding world when the year is up?" Potter had mentioned that once or twice, but Draco hadn't taken it seriously. Why would he? Real wizards had to be with their own kind, and from the hints and snippets and rumors he'd picked up floating around about Potter's childhood, Potter had no reason to love his Muggle relatives, and therefore no reason to love Muggles.

"Because there's nothing left for me here, except my friends, and I can owl them," Potter said. "Or raven them." He visibly brightened. "Your father's going to get me a raven so I can reach Ron and Hermione without anyone suspecting."

"That's a generous gift," Draco said. He didn't know why he said it, except from a vague desire, he reckoned, to see how Potter would respond.

Potter gave Draco a look that he didn't know how to interpret. "I know it is," he said. "Your family has been incredibly generous." He shifted his stance and pointed his wand at Draco again. "Do you want to continue?"

"If you'll tell me what that chill in your voice means," Draco said, still stubbornly holding onto his wand rather than lifting it to the ready. "Why should it matter to you that my family's generous?" Then he saw the way Potter's mouth curled, and amended it quickly to, "Why should it _bother _you that we're generous, when that worked out to your advantage?"

Potter seemed to spend a long moment pondering, although Draco hadn't known he could think so deeply. He had obviously thought about dueling, but his gift seemed half-instinctive, and in Draco's experience, people who followed instincts were like his Aunt Bellatrix: not great thinkers, even if they were brilliant.

Finally, Potter said, "Gratitude always places you on a lower plane. You can never be equal to the person who gave you the gift, unless you can do something for them in return. And I can't do anything for you."

_And he'd be sensitive about being lower, _Draco thought, remembering the way Potter had almost torn off his chains when the goblins left. "Potter—"

But Potter shook his head violently and gestured him forwards, and Draco obediently lifted his wand again. They were here to duel, not to have insightful revelations into each other, and he _did _want to learn dueling from Potter.

The other skill, he was already proving to himself that he knew how to do on his own.


	7. Ravens and Demonstrations

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—Ravens and Demonstrations_

Harry studied the raven that Lucius had rented for him, or bought for him, or something. He knew that it had made at least one successful trip to Ron and Hermione, because he could see the letter clutched in its beak.

But it didn't want to come to him. Instead, it preened its feathers and hopped about on the table in his rooms, and every time Harry made a move towards it, it would pick up the letter and move away. That included every time Harry raised his wand. The one time so far he'd tried to Summon it, the raven had gripped the corner of the envelope in its beak and the other corner in one claw, and looked as if it would tear it in half.

Harry snorted. _You would have been a damn stupid Auror if you'd let yourself be outsmarted by a bloody bird._

That just reminded him that he would never go back to being an Auror or an Auror candidate, though, and then that he was a slave, and everyone thought they could lord it over him, even a raven.

_Not Draco._

But his dueling lessons with Draco were one of the things he wanted to discuss with Ron and Hermione, so Harry focused on the bird and lifted his wand again. The raven tensed, but what he floated off the tray was a scrap of cheese left behind from lunch. Harry ate most of his meals with Narcissa now, but sometimes he still wanted something in his rooms. He'd eaten lunch up here today anticipating that the raven might come back.

The glossy black bird tilted its head back hungrily, watching the cheese and fluffing its feathers out. Then it took off, winging towards the cheese while carrying the envelope along with it.

Harry flicked his wand again, and the cheese looped back towards him. The raven flew in a circle just outside the point where he could have grabbed the letter, but Harry kept the food close enough to him that the raven couldn't snatch _it, _either. They watched each other, the raven's wingbeats the loudest sound in the room.

"What about if we trade?" Harry offered. He felt a bit silly speaking to a bird that way, but on the other hand, post-owls were smart enough to find people just by being told their names, and the same thing seemed to be true of the raven. It had also known what his Summoning Charm meant. "On three. We toss."

The raven watched with a bright eye. Harry shook his head. But he was confident he was quick enough with spells to pull the cheese back in time if it turned out the raven absolutely wouldn't surrender the letter.

"One," Harry said, and drifted the cheese above his head. The raven flew in another circle, but Harry thought he saw the claws loosen a little. "Two." The raven flew higher, at the level of the cheese. "_Three_." And Harry released his spell so that the cheese dropped towards the floor at his feet.

The raven let go of the letter at the same time, and Harry had it safely in his hand before it could reach the cheese. When the raven touched the cheese, it took it to the table and began loftily nibbling it as if that had been its plan all along.

Harry shook his head. "At least you'll have me exercising spells outside the dueling room," he muttered, and tore open the letter.

_Dear Harry,_

_ I'm so happy to hear what's going on, and that you're managing some semblance of a normal life with the Malfoys. Of course, it could never be the same thing as being free and with us, but if this is what it takes to keep you safe and away from what the goblins had planned for you, then I'm grateful to them./i_

_ We'll write you as often as we can, of course. Right now, the wizarding world seems pretty quiet. There are a few people who are upset that you weren't given over to the goblins, but the goblins themselves report "satisfaction" with the way they saw you treated by the Malfoys and say they have no intention of closing the bank. I hope the Malfoys didn't make you do anything too awful!_

_ Ron wants to add something to this letter, so I'll end it right here. Just—keep safe, and I hope you're happy, and tell us everything that's going on. Love, Hermione._

The writing switched to Ron's rough scrawl. Harry felt the bed behind him and sat down. He couldn't seem to stop smiling.

_Mate!_

_ I'm not happy that the Malfoys had to take you, either, but I'm glad that it's worked out so far. If you need someone to curse them, when you're not allowed to do it, then say the word. I'd half-like to see how my dueling skills measure up to someone like Lucius Malfoy. They say that he was one of the best Death Eaters, but I bet that I'm better. You were the one who trained me, after all._

Harry paused. He would have to be careful about how much he revealed with the dueling lessons with Draco, he thought. He didn't want Ron to feel like he was less special just because Harry was now giving lessons to someone else.

_How's Malfoy's mother? There were some people going around saying in the papers that she's an even bigger bastard than Malfoy _and _his dad combined, and that she would come up with the best things to do to you to make sure you paid the debt._

Harry snorted. He _would _tell the truth about Narcissa, for the sheer pleasure of imagining the look on Ron's face when he did.

_And what kind of food are you getting there? Mum frets that they aren't feeding you properly because they think you're a slave. Say the word, and she'll send over half a dozen cakes and all these hard sweets she's been making._

_ I hope you write back soon. It's driving me mad not to know what you're up to in there, and not to be with you and see you all the time. Love, Ron._

Harry closed his eyes. He'd like to see Ron and Hermione. The longing made his teeth ache with it, as if his jaw was sore. He absently reached up and felt at them to make sure that wasn't the case.

But he just—wasn't allowed, that was all. That was the way things were. That was the way things would have to remain for the moment.

Someone knocked on his door. Harry stood up and made sure that his wand was in his hand. The raven called smugly and flew out the window, back to the private aerie that Lucius had apparently built for it. Harry shook his head. When the birds that delivered his post were getting better treatment than he was, he—

The knock came again, and the impatient edge to it told Harry well enough who it was. He held his smile as he opened the door, because they didn't need a quarrel just now. "Yes, Draco?" he asked.

Draco walked into the room without seeming to notice the letter on the table behind Harry, which was more reprieve than Harry had thought he would have. "Get your imaginary chains on," he said. "We're going to Diagon Alley, and you're going to try out bodyguard duty."

* * *

Draco kept a narrow eye on Potter as they moved through the crowds swirling around Diagon Alley. He hadn't told Potter why they had come here so abruptly, because he didn't know himself. Well, he didn't know in the sense that he couldn't have said for certain, and he would have testified as much under Veritaserum.

But he knew it had something to do with his father's contacts—in other realms than the Ministry, this time. The Ministry had taken his father's independence and part of the Malfoy fortune, and Lucius intended to punish them by finding more wealth and power elsewhere. They were going to meet someone who could help him do that.

And that person had probably asked to see Lucius's heir and their family's new slave, as well.

So far, Draco had to admit, Potter was a better actor than he'd thought. He didn't look quite as ill as he had when the goblins were around him, either. He kept his head up and slid through the people around them like a shark through waves, ignoring the way they usually turned to stare once they caught a glimpse of his scar. His hand was always on his wand. His field of vision always included both Draco and his father.

Someone would probably think he was a trained bodyguard. It made Draco wonder just what they _did _teach during Auror training, and how many of the techniques they portrayed as special and secret and just for the trainees could be profitably applied elsewhere.

Potter could do several things.

_If he intended to stay in the wizarding world._

Draco frowned. Yes, that one was rather the sticking point. Every time he alluded to the future in their dueling lessons, Potter always spoke of the next year, and anything Draco ventured beyond that point met with silence. Potter didn't want to tell Draco what he intended to do in the Muggle world, how he intended to live when he had no real credentials and his life and friends were here.

_I hate to see potential going to waste. _That was the only way Draco could explain his interest, anyway. He didn't want to see Potter kneel to anyone, and he didn't want to watch him vanish into the Muggle world and lose every chance he might have to recover his freedom and prestige. Draco would like to see him rub the goblins' noses, and the nose of anyone who hadn't supported him, in the shine of his glittering new life.

But Potter himself didn't seem to care about that. And Draco could hardly take revenge for someone who didn't want him to.

He pondered, and watched, and stepped straight into someone in front of him, a tall wizard hurrying along with a wooden box under his arm. The end of the box came unhinged as Draco watched, and bright blue eggs slid to the ground, shattering on the cobblestones. Draco whisked his robes away from the spreading mess of yolk.

The wizard turned around. His hand was on his wand already, but he went still and stared when he saw Draco. Perhaps it was his face, or perhaps it was his age; the next moment, the wizard had turned to his father, after all. Draco lifted his chin and strove to look unconcerned. Perhaps he was twining his hands together, but that didn't mean that he was _nervous_. Only someone ignorant of who he was would conclude that.

And it didn't seem as though the man was ignorant of who they were, after all.

"Are you going to pay for this, Malfoy?" he asked, heaving the box. A few last eggs slid out and smashed on the cobbles. Draco stiffened. If it was him, he would at least have _tried _to save his precious Potions ingredients, or whatever they were. But this particular man never took his eyes from Lucius's face. "Or are you going to make your brat do it?"

His father's face went tight in a way that made Draco have trouble breathing. Then his father bowed his head, bowed in turn over the cane that he carried when they were in public, and opened his mouth to speak.

He didn't get the chance to.

"Master."

It was Potter's voice, far flatter and more servile, because devoid of emotion, than it had been in front of the goblins. Of course, Draco thought, as he watched people turn around at the sound of the word, they had a larger audience this time.

"Yes, Potter?" Lucius sounded unconcerned, but the wizard started and stared at Potter for the first time, apparently seeking the scar under his fringe.

Potter had knelt down next to the eggs, his chains clinking. He dipped his fingers into the yolk and held them up, dripping, with shards of shell twined among his fingers. "I recognize these eggs, Master," he said. "They had a section on them in Auror training. They're miniature dragon eggs."

Draco choked. Miniature dragons were a species so rare that most of them only existed in private collections now, where the wizards breeding them hoped to release them back into sanctuaries someday. He had heard that they would lay large numbers of eggs in captivity, but few of those eggs were fertile, although it was hard to tell which ones were infertile until they failed to hatch.

"Illegal to trade?" Lucius asked as if he wasn't sure, like Draco, that they were.

Potter bowed his head. "Yes, Master. Except to registered breeders."

The sound of his voice, and the expression on his face, what little Draco could see of it, made Draco want to haul Potter to his feet and slap him. Yes, he _needed _to be respectful when he spoke to a Malfoy. That didn't _actually _mean the Malfoy would hurt him forever if he wasn't. Potter was being ridiculous.

_This charade is more for the audience than for us, and you know it._

Draco didn't know where his mind got off being _reasonable _at him. He scowled at Potter anyway, since everyone who saw would probably assume he just didn't like Potter, or resented him for causing this kind of scene.

Lucius turned back to the wizard with the box. "Did you know this fact?" he asked, all grave and courteous, making Draco want to swallow a laugh now. "I am more than willing to pay for them, but I want to know if it will be legal or black market value."

The wizard glanced sharply over Lucius's head, in the direction of what Draco thought might well be scarlet Auror robes. Then he shook his head and said, "I'm inclined to let it go. _This _time," he added quickly.

Potter raised his head. His eyes seemed to memorize the wizard's face. Then they moved downwards, and he was on his feet and between the wizard and Draco.

Draco blinked. The movement had happened so fast he'd missed it. Of course, that was probably a good thing in a bodyguard. If Potter moved so fast that he surprised the people he was guarding, that meant he would probably surprise the ones attacking them, too.

The wizard stumbled back a step and said, "Is this how you allow your slaves to treat free men, Malfoy?"

"When you aim your wand elsewhere," Potter said, voice like granite, "then I'll go back to minding my master's business. _Sir._"

Draco looked down. Yes, the wizard had held his wand pointed towards Draco. It was subtle, concealed within his sleeve. He had no idea how Potter had seen it.

_I need to learn what he knows. I don't want to fail at protecting myself when he's gone._

The wizard stepped back. Then he shook his head and said, "Slaves should know their place."

"I know mine." Potter didn't seem as though he intended to let his gaze waver. "Between the Malfoys and danger."

Draco blinked at nothing. That was a more explicit answer than he had thought he would get, even given the charade. He wished he could lean forwards and look at Potter's face right now without it being obvious, because he wanted to see what expression he was wearing and how genuine it was.

The wizard backed further away, and Potter flexed his hand around his wand, then moved out in front of Draco again.

Draco and his father exchanged glances. For one of the few times in his life, though, Draco discovered that he didn't know what Lucius was thinking simply from the expression on his face. He had turned around to look at Potter again too quickly for that, at least when his expression was so complex.

Draco nibbled his lip thoughtfully as he trailed after Potter. Maybe, if Potter meant anything of the sentiment he'd just expressed, then Draco would have an easier time persuading him to stay in the wizarding world.

* * *

Harry pressed his forehead against the wall of the shower, and stood there until even the enchanted water sluicing over his back and hair threatened to turn cold. Then he straightened and pulled back, shaking his head as he turned off the shower and wrapped his towel around himself.

He didn't understand, no. He didn't understand how everyone was fooled by the simple act he had put on. He didn't understand why the people who had said they supported him hadn't come up to in Diagon Alley or protested; there had been people who turned away, but that wasn't the same thing. He didn't understand the way Malfoy Father and Son had stared at him for the rest of that trip to Diagon Alley.

He had played out the act. He had done as he had to.

It still left him feeling as though someone had coated his skin with a thin film of slime.

Harry dressed in the plain pyjamas that Ren had left him and sat down on the end of his bed. He could feel weariness weighing his eyelids down—it always did, when he'd spent hours with his nerves tuned to the pitch of alertness like that—but he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep if he lay back now. His skin shuddered and shivered along his nerves, and he wanted to throw up and knew that he wouldn't be able to work enough spit into his mouth to do so.

He didn't _want _this.

But Malfoy probably hadn't wanted to sacrifice a vault to rescue him, either, Harry thought, lying back after all. (Maybe it would be different in his _slave _bed than in his own). Harry hadn't asked him to, but the deed was done, and they weren't being horrible to him when things were in private.

He had enough to eat, enough to wear, things to do to keep him from going mad with boredom. It was more than he had ever had at the Dursleys'. His memories of the past told him to shut up and be grateful.

His sense of reality told him to be glad that he hadn't turned the man in the Alley today into a pile of grey mush. His magic had risen to the surface in fury, and the man would have been an admirable target.

Then Harry sighed. No, admirable only in the sense that it would have been a release for his fury. He _knew _that he couldn't simply unleash his magic like that. If the wizarding world got wind of what he could really do to anyone with skin and flesh and bone, then they wouldn't demand that he become a slave. They would demand that he be locked up, or used as a weapon, and his freedom would never be in sight again.

Someone knocked on his door.

Harry kept his head bowed as he laughed, because seriously, what was this, a day to repeat everything? Regrets, and words, and encounters with Malfoy?

But he kept knocking, and wouldn't go away, and after all, Harry was a slave in the Manor, with no real right to keep the door shut if Draco wanted to open it. So he got up and opened it. That much freedom, he could at least preserve.

Draco stepped into the room. For once, though, he didn't glare around as though wondering what each of the furnishings had cost and whether Harry was worthy of that cost, or shake him, or demand dueling lessons immediately. He just watched Harry thoughtfully. Harry threw his head back and folded his arms to encounter the gaze; he couldn't pretend to be calm, so he would just be defiant instead. That ought to square with things.

"Did you mean what you said?" Draco asked at last.

"I said a lot of things," Harry said. "And if you're asking about all the master and sir business, then _no_."

Draco flinched from the lash of magic that followed the words. Harry held his breath for a second. He honestly hadn't meant to send so much out. He wondered if Draco had felt the power eating for a moment at his skin and fingernails, tearing them apart, rending at him. It wouldn't be his fault if he had. It would be Harry's.

_Keep yourself under control. _He told himself that, again and again, but it never seemed to work. He wondered if he would have had as much trouble if he was a slave of the actual goblins. Maybe they would have provided less pleasant surroundings to remind him, and that would have made him keep his temper in check.

But perhaps it would have resulted in someone's death instead, probably when he tried to make Harry lick his boots. He couldn't know.

"I meant—I meant that bit about standing between the Malfoys and danger." Draco's color was high, his eyes measuring the distance between Harry and the door.

"What?" Harry stared at him. It seemed the strangest thing for Draco to pick up on.

But the fear was real, so Harry turned and went back to the bed. He sat down, put his head between his hands, and thought of all the flying he would do when he was free of this world, at last. He would go up into the clouds, and he would never come down until he was ready to go to Muggle London and seek a new life. Maybe he would fly to Ireland, or to the Continent. The wind scrubbing his face, the sharp sting on his cheeks and in his ears, his hands gripping the broom while the silence sang to him.

He filled his mind with the sensation, and finally looked up. Draco still stood in place, although he'd cocked a leg backwards. Harry recognized one of the dueling stances he'd taught him, and almost smiled.

"I meant it at the time," he said. "It was the sort of thing that someone would probably expect me to say, if I took the bodyguard duties seriously and agreed that I should be a slave."

Draco frowned. "Oh."

"Why that word?" Harry pulled his legs in close to him and thought of the way he would rise on the broom, spinning and dodging and not caring what anyone back on the ground said about it being dangerous. He would have survived something far more dangerous, at least to his spirit and soul, after passing through the slave ordeal.

"Because I hoped if you meant it that it would be easier to persuade you to stay in the wizarding world," Draco admitted. Harry blinked at him. "I don't want you to go," Draco said, and turned as red as if he'd made a love confession.

"Why not?" Harry asked, mystified. "I'm sure you can find someone to help you continue your training after I leave."

Draco shook his head. "It's not that," he said. "I—want you to stay here. You shouldn't let them drive you away."

Harry tried to control his laughter, but it came out anyway, gravel laughter, grave laughter, harsh and hard and high. Draco jumped and backed away another step, but Harry saw the look in his eyes. _That was the way Voldemort would have laughed, _it said.

And Harry agreed, but he was too tired to hide what he thought anymore, or to let fear stop him.

"You think they're driving me away," he whispered, bowing his head. "I _hate _this. I would have died before I agreed to become a slave, if it wasn't that the goblins threatened everyone. And then no one spoke up except my friends when I agreed to put a collar on. They could have agreed with me that it had to be done and still said it was a shame. But they all kept quiet. They were afraid.

"When I've done this, then the debt is paid. I'll have done everything they could ask of me, all the people who think I owe them something for their adoration. I'll _go_. That's the only thing I can ask now, that's the only thing I can think about, and the only thing I can live for." He lifted his hands, watching Draco stare at the bones and the veins in the backs of them. "My magic can melt people's flesh and bone when I get angry enough. That started when those former Death Eaters were attacking me right after the war. The Healers say my rage condensed and turned my magic into _something else._" He took a deep breath, feeling again the way the Healers had backed away from him in fear and wonder, and the way he had carried his magic around like a nest of spiders about to hatch inside him. It wasn't all his magic, but it was enough to taint his magic.

"I don't ever _want _to be that angry again," Harry finally continued. "But as long as I stay in the wizarding world, I will be, because I'll always run into someone who thinks that I owe them something. I need to break free. Going to the Muggle world is the only way I can."

He wound down. It hadn't taken that long, after all, to say what had brewed in him, to spill the poison. Harry sighed and reached for the letter Ron and Hermione had sent him again. "Right now, I want to answer my post, and then I want to sleep," he whispered. "Go away, Draco. Please."

The opening and shutting of the door said his wish had been granted.


	8. Attention Attracted

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—Attention Attracted_

Lucius, on his way past the sitting room on the second floor, paused and turned back to look in. His son sat there alone, his elbows propped on his knees, his eyes blank as he stared into the fire.

Lucius tapped the cane thoughtfully against the floor for a moment, and then strode in. Draco turned his head to acknowledge him, but did not rise to his feet and nod to his father respectfully as he usually did. Lucius didn't need that, so instead he stood in front of the fire and tried to figure out what was wrong by studying Draco.

Draco stirred restlessly before too long a time had passed. Lucius hid his smile. Draco had never been good at the arts that required sitting still, and Lucius supposed that he could not blame him. Draco was far more light and air and motion than Lucius or even Narcissa were; Lucius had never played Seeker.

"What do you do when you find out that you don't _want _someone to submit?" Draco asked him.

Lucius blinked and stared at him. Of all the things that should concern Draco, he thought, it would be the one that he wouldn't have imagined with a hundred years to guess.

"You know that this simulacrum of slavery is only temporary," he said quietly. "And when it is done, then Potter will be gone."

Draco's hands clenched when he spoke the words, and Lucius paused, turning his head so that Draco would see only a smooth side of a profile while he worked out what that meant. _Oh. So it is like _that, _is it?_

And this, perhaps, he could have guessed. Draco had been denied a successful rivalry and friendship, both, with Potter. Nor had they ever met in a formal duel or arranged a bargain between themselves the way Potter and Lucius had settled on the weregild. So when Draco saw Potter in a new context, it made sense for his mind to turn to this way of settling the matter.

"If you do not wish to see someone submit," Lucius said, "then you are a different kind of man than the Dark Lord was."

Draco bowed his head. Lucius thought he could feel his wife's approving gaze through the walls. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, he said the words right the first time.

"But there are ways of making a partnership joyous," Lucius added. "When I was courting your mother, I had no success in making her look at me with liking until I brought her joy, instead of simply trying to impress her."

Draco looked up swiftly. "But you never had—I mean, Mother was interested in _normal _things. Not just dueling all the time."

Lucius turned his hands palm-up, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. "I still had to find out what she was interested in. I mistook it for Muggle-baiting, house-elves, and the pride of her family before I found out what it was. The process of discovery will teach you much about the person you want to court." Perhaps better to go no further than that word for now.

Draco bit his lip, looking at him. "So you didn't have any clues?"

Lucius smiled. "Very good, Draco. Yes. At that time, her parents were alive, and I asked her father what she would like. And before she ran away to marry a Mudblood, Andromeda Tonks showed some good sense. She advised me what Narcissa might like as well."

"Potter has no family to ask about that, though," Draco muttered, half-petulant.

"Then I suggest you ask his friends," Lucius said, and as Draco stared at him in horrified disbelief, turned his head further to show Draco only his profile, and not the small smile tugging at his jaw.

* * *

Harry felt better when he'd written back to Ron and Hermione, a great torrent of complaints and huffing and explanations about why he continued to stay with the Malfoys instead of just breaking free and going elsewhere. Well, of course they knew why, because it was the same reasoning that he would have used if it was the goblins holding the leash, but it felt good to get it out.

That done, and a short nap behind him, he decided that he might as well go down for dinner. He doubted anyone but Narcissa would bother to meet him. Well, that was okay. He could deal with a lot of food and not much conversation.

But the whole Malfoy family was around the table when Harry walked in. Harry ignored the impulse to retreat and served himself from the side table: poached eggs, fresh fruit, fresh salad. It was what he felt like. The house-elves had probably already served the Malfoys, but the elves were showing a tendency to be extremely confused about what they should do with Harry, who wasn't a house-elf, but also wasn't technically a master, and in the end, Harry and Narcissa had agreed not to bother them about meals.

Harry sat down in his chair and took a bite. Then he looked up, because Draco was making a motion across the table.

Draco was pushing a glass of pumpkin juice at him.

Harry stared. No house-elf had popped up in the room—he would have heard it—which meant Draco must have poured the glass himself. Not hard when the jug of pumpkin juice stood right by his hand, but still. It was unusual.

Harry nodded slowly and took the glass from Draco, refreshing himself with a small swallow. He kept watching the Malfoys, though, ready to move if it turned out that something was wrong here. He didn't think they would _hurt _him, but Draco was staring at Harry and apparently holding his breath, while Lucius went on eating his dinner and Narcissa—hid a smile?

Harry wondered for a moment if the pumpkin juice was part of a joke, but he honestly didn't think Narcissa would do something like that to him. Among other things, it didn't seem like it would fit him into the family, and Narcissa wanted that, for reasons that had yet to make sense to Harry. So he enjoyed his juice, and his breakfast, and tried to ignore the fact that Draco looked like he was sitting on the edge of his seat.

* * *

_He didn't even say thank you._

Draco didn't put his head down in his hands and sigh, but only because he knew that would be silly, would earn him Harry's scorn and his father's, and would make his mother look at him mildly under her eyelashes. He sat back, nursed his own tea, and thought about the other things he had sometimes seen Harry enjoying.

_Privacy. Flight. Quidditch. His friends' company. Certain kinds of sweets. Beating up Slytherins._

And none of those were in Draco's power to give him. Draco checked another sigh and watched Harry eat his grapes one by one, as though they might betray him and scurry off to the corners of the table if he chewed them faster. Draco bit his lip thoughtfully and wondered if something else to eat would help. He had thought Harry enjoyed some kinds of sweets; could he remember specific ones?

A cudgeling of his brain made him remember that sometimes Harry came back from Hogsmeade with a certain box of chocolates from Zonko's. Draco waited until the end of dinner and then escaped as the elves cleared the table, heading straight for the Owlery and mentally counting the Galleons he kept in his bedroom drawers. The chocolates were certain to be expensive.

Well, that made them all the more suitable as a gift for a Malfoy to give someone whose attention he wanted to attract.

* * *

Harry's attempt to bribe the raven with cheese was more successful this time, and it settled on top of the headboard and ate in contentment while he tore open the letters it had carried.

_Dear Harry, _Hermione had written,

_I wish I knew what to tell you. The Malfoys do seem like they're treating you decently, but decent treatment as a slave is no substitute for having your freedom back. Is there any way they could extend their wards and glamours around the gardens, so that you could at least go out for exercise without being seen? It doesn't seem like it should be impossible. I know they want to avoid trouble with the goblins, but they're going to have trouble with _you _if you don't get some fresh air soon._

Harry grinned. Hermione was always phrasing things the way Harry wished he had. He would show the letter to Narcissa. Maybe she could think of something that would persuade Lucius.

Ron's letter included several creative suggestions for revenge that made Harry sigh over it. He wished Ron had thought of that when Harry was in danger from the goblins. They were the ones he blamed for this current situation, not the Malfoys. The Malfoys were just the ones making it difficult.

Someone knocked on his bedroom door. Harry stood up with his wand in his hand, anticipating another visit from Draco to arrange a practice duel, and then realized the tapping came from the window instead. He turned around.

A magnificent owl hovered there, grey with streaks of white on its wings. Harry would have been already calling to Lucius if he hadn't recognized the bird as one from the Malfoy Owlery. It did make him wonder what the family had to tell him that they couldn't have sent a house-elf with, but he went to open the window anyway.

The owl flew in and alighted on his bed, staring at him expectantly. Harry rolled his eyes and reached for the letter it carried.

But it wasn't a letter. It was a package, a rectangular, almost flat box from Zonko's. Harry stared at it, and then his eyes gradually narrowed and his heart rate picked up. It was a box of Wizard's Wands, which he hadn't tasted since his sixth year at Hogwarts.

_Someone is fucking with me._

The owl hooted and flinched through all the spells Harry cast on it, spells that were meant to detect the multiple kinds of hexes you could put on food. But the chocolates were still intact at the end of it, although the box looked a bit battered. Harry looked down at it and bit his lip. Perhaps it was what it seemed to be, a peace offering.

He would still ask the Malfoys about it, of course. They were the only ones who could have sent it, but it seemed strange they would have. Unless Draco was continuing whatever plot had begun with pouring him the pumpkin juice that morning.

_A strange plot to involve so much food._

Harry dismissed the owl, which hovered outside the window for a few minutes until it realized he was really giving it no message to take back, and then vanished with a disapproving shriek. That left Harry to bite his lip and keep staring at the box before he flipped open the lid and undid the expensive, gold-colored wrapping on the inside.

The chocolate wands inside had dozens of different kinds of tastes, though unlike Every-Flavor Beans, Harry actually found most of them appealing. He picked up a hazelnut one and closed his eyes as the sweetness seared his tongue.

Yes, he would have to ask Draco about this.

* * *

"So, I know you sent chocolates to me. I just don't know _why_, or why you picked expensive ones that you knew I liked."

Draco had just come in through the door to the dueling practice room, and it seemed stupid to walk right back out again, even though Harry's words made him want to. He settled for folding his arms and frowning at Harry, who frowned back.

"The answer is in the words you just spoke, idiot," Draco finally said. He would have to hope that Harry wouldn't require wooing with sweet words. "What does it usually mean when someone picks expensive chocolates that they know you like?"

"That they're trying to slip me a love potion."

Draco paused, and then sat down on a chair behind him and nodded. "When you've been Harry Potter all your life, I reckon it does."

Harry stepped forwards, and if Draco had hoped to attract his attention, at least he had it now, all to himself, with Harry's eyes wide and focused as if he was hoping to trick Draco into confessing his secrets that way. "Tell me what it means when _you_ do it."

Draco licked his paper-dry lips and stood up. Fuck if he was doing this from a seated position. "It means," he said, carefully, "that I really want you to stay in the wizarding world, and I thought you might if you liked me enough."

Harry looked at him as though he wished he had let the wizard he'd stopped in Diagon Alley curse Draco. "_Why_?"

"I don't know why," Draco said. "Except that I think it's stupid and unfair that you're letting other people drive you away, and you've already paid a greater toll to stay here and have the run of the wizarding world than any of the people who were ready to sacrifice you to Gringotts did. And it's like letting them win if you go. And I want you to do something other than bodyguard for us and pretend to be our slave."

"That was the deal," Harry said, turning away to walk towards a series of targets on the other side of the room. "Until the end of the year. And tutoring you, of course."

"I don't want you to do that if you don't like it," Draco said.

Harry paused between one step and another. Then he brought his foot down and stood there with his arms folded, facing the targets, counting them. Or he looked like he was counting them. If he was, Draco didn't think he needed to spend _that _much time making sure how many there were.

"Why would what I want matter to you?"

Draco stared at his back. "Most people don't require an explanation of that," he said, because it was the most neutral way of saying what he wanted to say.

"Most people aren't slaves, either," Harry said.

"You can't attribute this to just being Harry Potter, the way you could the chocolates and the love potions," Draco said. "You _haven't _had people trying to enslave you all your life. I know you haven't."

He didn't expect Harry's laughter, or the way his shoulders twitched as though he was trying to keep himself from vomiting. After a few minutes, though, Harry stopped laughing and straightened up with a deep breath.

"True, to a point," he said, still without facing Draco. That was starting to get on Draco's nerves. "But living as the Chosen One was more than a bit like being a slave. I didn't realize that until it was over, or I would have rebelled earlier. But it was all about what I had to do, my _duty_, and not what I wanted. That was going to be for after the war.

"Then I found out that it wasn't, that the debts I owed weren't done. So I told myself I would pay this final debt, and that would be it." He turned around, shaking his head. "You want me to stay here, where people think I owe them and they own me? Fuck you."

Draco's breath caught, and he took a step forwards, staring. "Fuck yes," he said, without meaning to.

Harry turned his wand so that it pointed at Draco's belly, and having seen all the spells Harry knew that Draco had never even _heard _of, Draco knew to take the threat seriously. "And now you're making fun of me."

Draco shook his head and let his tongue have free rein. That was never a good idea with his parents, but if Draco was right, both he and Harry could get lots of things from each other that they would never get from anyone else in their lives. "No. No, I didn't mean to. I just mean that I like seeing you angry and paying attention to your future instead of curling up and acting like you're ready to die."

"I never did that." Harry obviously measured the floor space between them with his eyes.

"Oh, right, not literally," Draco said. "But you gave in and you went along, and that's not _you_. If we hadn't rescued you, you would have let the goblins have you and treat you as their slave, wouldn't you?"

Harry's wand shook as he clenched his fists. "What else could I have done, given what they were threatening?" he asked, not quite snapping.

"You could have fought back and got away," Draco said. "That's all. That's what a lot of people would have done. I'm not saying that you're wrong for agreeing to be a slave—"

"Yes, you are."

Draco had to smile. "All right. But you didn't protest as much. You shut down, and I know you have dangerous magic, but you didn't argue. You went along with it for the sake of others, because that's what you always do. If you're feeling different now, I'm glad. Because I don't want to be one of the people you simply go along with."

"Or someone I martyr myself for?"

Draco nodded. "Precisely. I want you to duel me because you like having someone to train, or because you like seeing me writhing in pain." He saw Harry flinch, and hurried on. Maybe that had been a bad thing to mention. Harry wasn't a sadist, except towards himself. "I want you to have fun thinking of all the ways to fool the goblins."

"There's not much I can do, when I have to wear chains whenever they come to visit you."

"But you can be more creative with it," Draco said. "You can come up with tricks and lies that we would never think of, because it's not us having to wear the chains. You could work with us more than you have."

Harry just looked at him. Then he said, "I hate the goblins. I want to kill them when I see them, not think of how to fool them."

"Then daydream about killing them when they're in front of you, and plan the rest of the time." Draco was starting to wonder how Harry had survived some of his adventures at school, with emotions that strong. Maybe Granger had told him to shut up and let her plan. "Come on, Harry. I know you can do better than this."

"I shouldn't _have _to."

"No," Draco agreed. "And at the end of the year, if you still want to leave the wizarding world, I can't stop you. But it seems you think the year until then has to be one of suffering and misery, and it _doesn't_. I promise. I can help you. Tell me what you'd like and I'll try to make sure it happens. And you can make the deception easier on yourself."

"It's—it has to be a bargain, Malfoy." Harry spoke as haltingly as though trying to read the language off a complex legal document in front of him. "The way I made with your father, about Ginny and the weregild. I'm not going to trust any of you without a bargain."

Draco stood up straighter. "If you want to make a bargain, then lay the terms down," he said. "I'll accept them, unless you require me to betray my family."

Harry stepped away from him, as though he had tried to brace himself against a wall that suddenly vanished. "Fine," he said, through his teeth, not turning his head to look at Draco. "I want you to promise that you'll help me the way you said you would."

"Fine," Draco said. "What do I get in return?"

Harry fidgeted back and forth until Draco wondered if he would get an answer today. Then he said, "I'll think about staying in the wizarding world at the end of the year. Only _think_," he snapped, as if he had seen Draco's mouth opening from the corner of his eye. "I didn't say that I would stay here."

"Just thinking about it is enough for me," Draco said. _There are so many things here that he loves, and so many people he loves. I can't believe that he'll abandon them without looking back. _

_ Maybe I can even become one of those people he loves._

It was a more daring plan than any Draco had envisioned before, one that left him breathless and panting, and he nearly missed Harry's words. "Really? Even though you can't read my mind and know that?" He turned to Draco and raised his eyebrows at him.

Draco nodded. This was something important, he knew. He couldn't fuck it up. He held Harry's eyes and kept his voice level and low. "I trust you. You've kept your word to my family so far, in a situation where lots of people would just run away. You accepted the bargain you talked about with my father, even though I could see the reasons it would repulse you. And you saved the world. I trust you."

Harry bit his lip and whirled away, arms folded around himself. Lots of people wouldn't have recognized the gesture. Draco, who had held himself like that and rocked in a corner of the Manor's rooms when the Dark Lord was at his worst, did.

"All right," Harry whispered at last. "That's our bargain, then. You try to help me fool the goblins and get better at it, and I'll think about staying in the wizarding world."

"You do that," Draco said. He made his voice simple, he hoped, without the cutting edge of mockery that Harry would be looking for. "In the meantime, I have one idea about the goblins already."

Harry tilted his head at him, eyes sparking. "Yeah? What is it?"

And Draco told him slowly, for the sheer pleasure of watching Harry's eyes widen and his lips part.


	9. Everything Changes

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nine—Everything Changes_

"Mr. Potter is looking _well_."

Harry kept his gaze focused straight ahead as he came down the stairs in his ornamental chains. Just breathe slowly, Draco had told him. Easier said than done, Harry would have claimed, but Draco had sat with him yesterday, breathing in and out, focusing on going slowly until Harry began to see the trick of it, and breathe with him.

He could begin the plan they had talked about when he reached the bottom of the staircase. He focused his eyes on the steps before him, felt his feet brushing the planks of marble, felt the smooth wood of the bannister beneath his hands, and felt the breath brushing in and out of his lungs.

"_Very _well," said the goblin who had spoken before, and chuckled. Harry recognized the sound of that chuckle. It was Ripclaw, who had come often to Harry during the time he was staying in Gringotts while they negotiated his slavery and gloated over him. "I'm surprised to see him looking so natural."

"Oh, of course we wish our slaves to look natural in their chains," said Lucius's careless voice. "If they tripped over them and made nuisances of themselves, we would not wish to have them around. And that would be—unfortunate."

"Of course, of course," Ripclaw said, while Harry counted the steps left in front of him and found they had narrowed down to one. "But you would be surprised how many people neglect the basic necessities, the—"

There was one step left, and then there were none, and Harry hit the bottom and turned towards Draco, kneeling in his direction and looking up at him adoringly. His skin still prickled when he did it, but he told himself what would come in the future, and managed to hold the position.

Draco looked down on him with a cool expression that Harry would have thought was real if he hadn't seen the way Draco flinched in their practice sessions. Then he reached out and placed a steady hand on Harry's forehead.

"Draco, what is this?" Narcissa sounded remote, interested, and no more. Harry still felt Draco shudder a little.

He wished he could mouth, _You didn't _tell _them? _But there was too much chance the goblins would see, so he kept his eyes focused on Draco and his face absolutely blank. Draco's hand stroked his hair again, as though to calm both Harry and himself.

"I tried a small charm on Potter," Draco said, so careless that Harry was afraid someone would suspect something. But he probably wouldn't have before he got to know Draco as well as he did, so the goblins might not, either. "He was being disobedient and obnoxious, and I wanted nothing more than an hour of peace. But it affected him in a much deeper way." His fingers curled in Harry's hair, and he laughed. "Who knew that there was something inside him that _longed _to submit?"

The words still made Harry want to spit. But he held his tongue, and replayed, over and over, in his head, Draco's sick expression. If he didn't want to submit, still less did Draco want to take his submission.

"What an intriguing idea," Ripclaw said, and he came nearer. Harry saw his thick toenails out of the corner of his eye. "Mr. Malfoy, could you—"

Draco's hand curled in Harry's hair, and Harry recognized the signal they'd agreed on. He turned, drawing his wand smoothly, and held it at Ripclaw's throat. Ripclaw stopped in place with a small squeak, staring at him. With Harry kneeling, their faces were almost on a level.

Harry held his breathing still smooth and quiet, because if he panted with the hatred he really felt, they might suspect something was off. But yes, this was so much _better _than just lashing out with his magic and melting his bones. It was just the way Draco had promised it would be.

_Satisfying._

That made him wonder if Draco knew what he was talking about on other topics, too. Such as the wisdom of staying in the wizarding world after his year was over.

"Stop him, stop him!" Ripclaw's hands were scrabbling at his throat, and his eyes were so wide that Harry thought they might tear through the sides of the sockets. "If he—if he hurts me—he can't hurt me! It's not _allowed_!"

"You did something that I didn't want you to," Draco said, voice sharp as a splinter of bone. "Came near me, and asked to touch _my _slave. Harry's now attuned to me so closely that he sensed that, and he can strike back to protect me." He paused minutely. "Or did you not hear about the way that he defended me in Diagon Alley the other day?"

"I heard." Ripclaw backed cautiously away from Harry, watching his wand. Harry wanted to laugh, to cheer, and the hatred within him was changing now, veering away from the bile-like burn to a gentler flame. "I thought—I just thought he wasn't allowed to do it to goblins, that's all."

Draco shrugged with one shoulder. "I've made a more thorough slave of him than you ever could. Perhaps because I used caresses instead of threats." His fingers tightened on Harry's scalp again. "And he's allowed to threaten anyone I want, given the price we paid for him."

"Certainly." Ripclaw seemed to have recovered from his shock. He bowed to Draco and turned to Lucius. "Mr. Potter seems submissive enough to content us. Perhaps we can cut the visit shorter this time? Since the evidence is so much more prominent."

Harry leaned back on his heels when Draco signed to him that he should, sucking in a deep breath of air. It was over, and he had survived, and yes, this was _much _more fun than his first imposture had been.

Not as much fun as being free would be, he had to admit. Not as much fun as being free of the need for imposture at all.

But he had survived and enjoyed himself, and at the moment, he was inclined to think that was much more important than the continuing fact of his slavery.

Draco stroked his hair, a silent reminder that the goblins were still here and Harry might do something to give himself away. With the way Harry felt at the moment, that would be deadly. It would crush all his enjoyment and make him more a slave than ever, because Draco would never dare try this again.

Harry huddled nearer and put his face against Draco's knees. They hadn't discussed that, and for a second, Draco went so stiff that Harry was afraid he would shove him away. But then Draco chuckled and reached down to frame the sides of Harry's face with his hands.

"You just want to be nearer and nearer, little one, don't you?" he whispered. "Well, I think I can gratify you in another way."

He urged Harry gently backwards and bent down. Harry saw the warning—and asking—shine in his eyes, and nodded. He heard Ripclaw chuckle. Of course the bastard would think that Harry was begging for what would happen next.

When Draco kissed him, though, it was full of the delight that they both felt in tricking Ripclaw. And Harry would much rather kiss Draco's mouth than Lucius's shoes. He kissed back with interest, even slipping his tongue in when Draco's lips parted a little.

Draco went even stiffer at that, but wizarding robes were deep, and Harry didn't think goblins were as adept at reading wizard body language as he had first thought they were. He stepped back a moment later and nodded, facing Ripclaw with a neutral face that Harry had to admit was impressive.

"So," he said. "I have a willing slave, something you never managed. Do you have anything else to say?"

Ripclaw shook his head. He had his hands together, and was looking at Harry from under half-lidded eyes. Harry blinked, wondering what kinds of weird fantasies about wizards goblins might have.

But Ripclaw said then, "It doesn't matter as much to me that we couldn't get him to submit, watching this. You were right, Mr. Malfoy. You made him your own with caresses and not threats." He sighed. "Watching him _crawl_..."

It was said in much the same tone as Voldemort might have spoken it. Harry felt his muscles coil and his magic rise as things that were almost separate from him, because there was no way he could refuse to respond to this.

Draco touched his head, and Harry turned towards him in what felt like a dream, scraps of color and thought blowing past him, words making no more sense.

Draco kissed him again, and this time, it was hard enough that Harry found _Draco's _tongue in _his _mouth before he thought of it. He reached up with both hands and laid them on either side of Draco's face the way Draco had done with him earlier.

The magic buzzed beneath his fingers, the magic that could turn skin and muscle into grey sludge, and Harry thought it would come out. He knew that if it touched Draco, it would melt him as effectively as the goblin Harry had reason to be angry at.

It wouldn't matter. He wouldn't be able to apologize later, he wouldn't be able to bring Draco back. His body shook with the effort of restraining itself, and of responding at the same time to the harsh, insistent tongue that thrust at him.

But if he could hold back, then he would have the chance later to speak about this with Draco, and especially to ask what the fuck he had been thinking.

That thought, of opportunities that he could only have in the future if he controlled himself now, made Harry gasp and break free of the kiss to bow his head. Draco stroked his hair, in silence and what felt like sympathy, although Harry had no idea how Draco could know what he was feeling right now.

Draco turned to face Ripclaw, although Harry only knew that from the way he watched his boots shuffle across the floor. "He's calm now," Draco said. "But I would leave him alone, if I were you." He made his voice more threatening than Harry had probably looked when he was about to explode.

Ripclaw muttered something, and then they were going towards the door, they were going out of the Manor, they were _leaving._ Harry repeated the words to himself until he relaxed, and no longer resented the floor under his knees.

"You did very well."

That was Lucius, and it almost brought Harry's magic screaming to the surface again. He looked up—

But his view was blocked. Draco had stepped in between his father and Harry, and although Harry didn't know what expression he had on his face, it was enough to make Lucius's fingers clench around his cane and his face close.

"I don't want you to say anything that could be taken as praise for a slave right now," Draco said, "no matter how sincerely you feel it. All right?"

Lucius stood there, and then nodded and swept away. That still didn't leave them alone, though, since Narcissa had come back from escorting the goblins to the door and was looking at them with a faint smile.

Harry became aware that he was kneeling in front of her, and scrambled to his feet, face so hot that he was surprised he didn't burst into flames. Narcissa held out her hand, and Harry looked around for a moment, wondering if she wanted his wand. He didn't know if he could give that up right now.

But she moved forwards, and Harry realized she wanted to shake his hand. He swallowed and clasped hers. Once again, she failed to turn into dust and ash.

"Thank you, Harry," she said. "I know that cannot have been easy for you."

And she turned and walked away with a step so calm that she might have been attending a polite little tea-party, or whatever pure-blood women did. Harry realized he had no idea, unless he could count on his experience of Molly and Ginny, and he really doubted that Narcissa spent mornings in the kitchen baking and casting household charms.

"Are you all right?" Draco's voice was so soft that Harry could have ignored it and walked upstairs if he wanted to. He almost did.

But Draco was responsible, at least partially, for the fact that both of them, all of them including Ripclaw, had escaped from the consequences of Harry's temper. He turned around, and found that Draco's face was red, too.

That made Harry relax his shoulders and roll them a little. "I'm all right," he said, shaking his head when Draco peered at him. "I mean it. I would have gone after him at one point, but you spared all of us from that. Thank you," he added.

"Are you angry about the way I did it?"

_The kiss. _Because he'd done it back, it took Harry a long moment to remember that it had been Draco's idea in the first place. He blinked his eyes and touched the nape of his neck. "I don't know," he said.

"That's more encouraging than saying you'll destroy me for the presumption, at least," Draco said, and smiled.

Harry smiled back, and, because it had been that kind of day, said, "Let's go get something to eat, and then I think we have some things to talk about."

* * *

Draco couldn't help crunching the biscuits that the house-elves brought them a little harder than usual, and licking his fingers free of crumbs—something he would never have done if he and Harry were eating with his parents. There were such things as _manners_, and, worse, there were such things as his mother's frowns.

But here, he could catch Harry's attention, and he would blush and look away in the most _delicious _way. So Draco considered that he was doing something all right, and even laudable in its way. He was furthering Harry's desire to stay in the wizarding world if he could give him someone to trust, someone he was attracted to.

_And someone I'm attracted to. _It didn't cost him as much embarrassment to admit it, now.

Finally, Draco leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his bulging stomach, smiling at Harry, a little sleepily. Harry blinked as though stunned, and then smiled back. Draco nodded. They had taken the first step, and Harry wasn't running away.

"I suppose you want to know why I kissed you," Draco said.

"To calm me down and keep me from killing Ripclaw, I thought." Harry hadn't licked his fingers, even after he saw Draco do it, as though he assumed things a Malfoy could do were forbidden to a Malfoy slave. He just dried his fingers off on a napkin and gave Draco an even look. "And to put on a little show, so he wouldn't think too hard about whether I was really submitting or not."

Draco blinked. He hadn't thought Harry would lay it out so coolly like that. "Well, of course," he said. "But also because I want you to stay."

"Kissing me like you wanted to suck my soul out through my tongue is supposed to make me think about _that_?" Harry asked blankly.

Draco shivered a little at the description, and hoped Harry hadn't noticed. "Not _think_ about that. Just feel it. Don't you want to stay in the wizarding world with someone who would take that sort of risk for you, someone who would touch you like that _all the time _if you wanted?" He made his voice as soft as he could, and saw Harry's eyes widen a little.

"Nothing makes sense," Harry said, after a few seconds of what looked like deep consideration. "You've fallen in love with your slave?"

Draco had to smile. "No one said anything about love. I just kissed you for the first time, and you kissed me. People do that all the time without being in love. And you're not my slave, either. We both know that."

"You acted like I was."

"So did you," Draco snapped, before he thought about it. Well, he had the _right _to say that. He wasn't going to act as though he was the only one responsible for this deception. Harry had agreed, and he was the one who had helped Draco create a private world where they were teacher and student, or equals, not master and slave. "We only did it because we had to," he went on, when he'd calmed himself down. "I know better than to think I could ever really take you over that way, Harry."

"If you don't want to take me over, or just to make sure that your family didn't give up a vault for nothing, what _do _you want?"

"What I've already told you I want," Draco said, but thinking back on it, he had to concede that it was possible he hadn't come out and told Harry exactly what he wanted. "For you to stay, and—I don't know how to say it so you won't laugh. Be with me? That's the best I can do right now."

"Because seeing me leave the wizarding world would mean you'd been less than a kind master?" Harry shoved his chair back from the table. "You don't need to think I would say something like that, Draco. I don't intend to ever tell anyone but my friends what goes on in the Manor."

"That _isn't _it," Draco said. "Merlin, Potter. I've kissed you, and I've suggested ways that you could avoid the goblins from destroying your spirit, and I've fought beside you. And you suggest that I just want to keep my good name?"

"Your family's good name." Harry was staring at him, squinting at him really. "I think that matters more to you."

"You're wrong," Draco said, and then had to backtrack, because Harry's squint got more skeptical than ever, and he would probably start breaking something in a minute. "I mean, not about my family's good name being important to me. But it's also important for me that you stay here, and that—I get to know you. I can't get to know you if you go to the Muggle world."

Harry closed his eyes. "I felt my magic boiling up like it would destroy Ripclaw today. You have to wonder if I'm dangerous, after that."

"I stopped it by kissing you. That doesn't make your magic sound very dangerous to _me_."

Harry choked on his laughter, and sat back, shaking his head and smiling at Draco with an expression that looked a lot better than that pale deaths-head of a mask Harry had been wearing so far. "I never tried that when I was looking for ways to calm my magic down. Being kissed by the son of an enemy, a former rival from school."

"I'm not that now," Draco said. "I'm someone who's trained with you."

"You could find someone else to train you," Harry said, his eyes filled with a challenge that Draco understood. "Someone who makes a better dueling instructor than I do. I'm not an expert. I know spells you've never seen before, but I'll run out of those soon."

"Imagine," Draco said, not knowing the words that would come tumbling out of his mouth, or how ridiculous they might make him sound, until he began to speak, "imagine living with me for a year. The spells we'll cast, the duels we'll hold, and all the ways we'll fool the goblins. Because I _know _you, Harry. You won't be content with just the one kind of lie. You'll want to try them all out sooner or later."

Harry blinked at him, but said nothing. He was listening, and for right now, that was enough.

Draco stood up and spread his hands, trying to indicate the room they were in, and more than that, _always _more than that, the Manor and his parents' money and the way of life he'd grown up with, which Harry wouldn't have any idea about. "This isn't life the way you know it, but it could be, for a little while. You could have the advantages and see if you liked it. And if you did, I would make it more than tolerable to you. I'd make it pleasant. Because otherwise you won't stay, and I want you to."

"Still relating everything to your own desires, Malfoy?" Harry glared at him like a glittering statute. No one could beat him down, not Harry, and Draco found himself smiling agreeably at the revelation.

"Of course not," he said. "Unless I can persuade you, then I know my desires won't become reality."

"But they're still the reason you're doing this."

Draco laughed. "It's not like you would trust me if I said they weren't. You know that I'm selfish, and that hasn't altered." He paused, then added softly, "We did this for life-debts, and yes, I think my father _is _thinking that we'll gain some prestige when you're free, to be known as the family who sheltered the Boy-Who-Lived. But I'm doing this now because I'm learning to like you, and I want you to like me back."

Harry's face had gone mask-like. "What if I said the only way I would like you is if you left me alone?"

Draco hesitated. But he reminded himself that Harry was still a slave, after everything, and that he shouldn't press too hard. Because that _would _be the way to lose him forever.

So Draco nodded and said, "I can do that. Do you want to be by yourself right now?" It was the only peace offering he could think of, even though he wanted to stay here and discuss the kiss some more, and what they were going to do the next time the goblins came.

Harry looked at the chairs and the floors and the table, as though they could offer the answer for him. But in the end, he faced Draco, and took a slow, deep breath, and nodded. "I want to. I need to think."

Just because he said that didn't mean he would end up deciding against Draco, Draco reminded himself sharply. He bowed his head and said politely, "All right. If you need me, I'll be in my bedroom." He added, as Harry's mouth opened, of course to say that he didn't know where it was, "Any of the house-elves will be happy to show you the way."

He walked to the door of the dining room, and turned around. "I know it's not much, but you _do _have the freedom of the Manor," he said. "If you want to go somewhere else." He turned around once again, away from the piercing light in Harry's eyes, and left.


	10. Reflections on Magic

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Ten-Reflections on Magic_

Of course, now that he had the time alone that he'd asked Draco for, Harry had no idea what he should do with it.

He stood looking out the window of the dining room, which was enchanted but still showed a pretty view of green gardens and white blossoming apple trees, for a while. Then he turned and walked into the corridors.

The Manor was bigger than he'd ever thought, with more wings and more rooms. Harry kept opening doors and looking at enchanted windows, and then shutting the doors up again. He was looking for something, but he had the feeling he wouldn't know what it was until he found it.

Then he opened one door that made him blink and shade his eyes, and wondered if he had found a way out into the gardens.

No, he saw at a single glance. The room was huge, but still a single room. The light came from an enchanted window on the far side, with the sunlight dancing on shelves and shelves of books. And in the center of the room was a podium with a single book open there. Harry wandered up to it.

The words on the page moved as he looked at them, and he grimaced. Too much of that would give him a headache. If it was a Malfoy book, it probably had an enchantment to prevent it from being read by Muggleborns, anyway.

He'd barely turned towards the door, though, when the words settled. Curious despite himself, Harry turned back around.

And he'd found _it._

The words on the page sparkled as he read them. It was an ordinary story, a story about a boy who grew up in a cold, wet hut on the edge of a village and dreamed of hunting dragons even though he didn't have a wand or a sword or anything else, and who had parents who treated him unkindly, so he also dreamed about running away. Harry swallowed as he read the descriptions. Maybe the book was touching his mind, interfering with his thoughts, drawing on his memories.

But he read on, because he had to. And the boy did run away from home, and ran into a group of people on the road who felt sorry for him and gave him food and water and new clothing. But when the boy woke up in the middle of their camp, he was clapped in chains, and they told him he was their slave now, and he had to march with them and work for them during the night, cooking their food and setting up the camp.

Harry leaned nearer, reading more and more rapidly. The boy slaved away, and Harry wanted to find the point where he broke free and made his captors pay for what they'd done, or at least ran to a new home with people who really would love him.

It didn't come. Page after page of grueling slavery description, and Harry felt his magic snarling and tightening in him, the way it always did, the way it always would. He was a fool to think that he would find any redemption here, or that he would be able to find any in the wizarding world.

The rage nearly exploded when he got to a scene where the people who had captured the boy refused to feed him. Harry pulled his hand sharply back from the book. His magic could damage the organic leather binding and the paper that had once been a tree—

Then he realized that his magic was quiet, calm, beneath the surface of his skin.

Harry shook his head. Then he shook it again. He could feel the anger blazing away in his forehead and his cheeks and his heartbeat and his ears. It just seemed disconnected from his magic, the way it had once been before he began to feel his rage turning into and influencing his power.

What about the book had made it do that? Was there an enchantment of some kind on the book?

Harry picked up the book and turned it around, more confident now that he knew he wouldn't turn it to sludge right away. But he couldn't see any sign of enchantments he didn't know on the cover or the binding, and he was usually pretty good about seeing things like that, after the amount of training he had received.

Harry frowned and lowered the book to the podium again, shaking his head. On the other hand, what were the chances that he would just happen to stumble into this room and find the book laid out and open to a story about a slave? Maybe one of the Malfoys had arranged this.

For a few minutes more, he concentrated on the book the way he had been taught, to make sure that he could correctly recall all the details in a written explanation as well as in a Pensieve memory. Then he turned away.

His alone time was over after all. He wanted to find Draco and see what he had to say about the book.

But he ran into Lucius first.

* * *

"I wish that you would speak to Draco about the pace of his courting young Mr. Potter, Lucius."

That was all Narcissa had had to say. Well, the press of her hand on his arm had helped as well, Lucius had to admit. But he would have spoken to Draco regardless. That demonstration in front of the goblins had been planned, and accomplished what it was supposed to. But Lucius doubted that the rage and the passion on display had been false.

He was walking through one of the corridors that led out towards the gardens when a door to a library Lucius hadn't visited in years opened, and Potter stumbled through. Lucius stayed his steps. Draco was the one he still needed to speak to, but Potter was an acceptable substitute.

He didn't get the chance to speak his carefully-prepared words. Instead, Potter looked directly at him and asked, "Was it you or Draco who put that book there?"

"What book?" Lucius considered his tone polite and well-bred. He certainly did not deserve the contemptuous gaze that Potter threw at him a minute later.

"The book I found in that library," Potter said, and jerked his head at the door he'd stumbled out of. "It was open on a podium, and it was telling me the story of a boy who was treated badly and ran away and then was enslaved, and I got angry, but my magic _didn't _melt the book." He took a deep breath at the end of that long sentence; Lucius might have felt compelled to check him if he went on. "And then I realized that my magic was calmed down. _Why_?"

"It was not because of any magic on the part of the book, if that is what you are thinking," said Lucius, recognizing part of where his distress had come from.

"Then what was it because of?" Potter turned blind, seeking eyes on him. "What else would make a book show me that story?"

"It was magic," Lucius conceded, "but it was of the house, and not the book. The house must have let you into that library, or perhaps even subtly guided you there." He paused. Potter showed no sign of wanting to talk about how he had found the library, so Lucius had to go on. "It can produce books that will soothe someone's mind or answer a need when someone who belongs in the house needs it badly enough."

Potter recoiled with a hiss. "I don't belong in this house!"

"The definitions of old magic like the Manor's are not the definitions of human beings," said Lucius with a vague soothing air that he thought should really have belonged to Draco. Well, Draco was not here right now, and Lucius had no wish to be harmed in the way that the boy's magic could harm him. "The house felt that you did, so it guided you to one solution to your problem."

Potter clenched his hands. "Does that mean my magic won't come back when I need it?"

"I doubt it," said Lucius. "The magic of the library is limited, as is the magic of all books. It can provide only a temporary solution." He hesitated, then went on, because Potter was still looking distressed, and he did not wish to fear for the future of his portraits or his son, either. "My father found a suggestion for a gift that he needed to impress a potential ally in that library. It was still up to him to find or make or buy the gift. The books could not force him to do anything."

Potter stared at him. "Why are you reassuring me?"

"Because of my son, and my wife," said Lucius. "They've taken a shine to you, although I don't understand why. I want peace in my house, and I want my son to have what he wants."

"Which is me not to leave the wizarding world." Potter shook his head. "Even though I have no idea why."

Lucius thought about correcting Potter on what Draco wanted, and then decided that that was Draco's to do. Perhaps even Lucius was wrong about what was going through his son's head at the moment. "Consider that, if you stayed in the wizarding world, you might be able to find a permanent solution to calming your magic down."

"Or I might hurt people, because I'll be around all the people who were irritating me in the first place."

"Or you might find a solution," Lucius repeated. The boy seemed thick to him, though perhaps that was only a result of having most of his friends and "allies" stand back and refuse to respond when he was being enslaved. Perhaps the lingering confusion in his head had clouded his mind. "I do not think you will in the Muggle world, unless you find another wizard who will know your identity in any case, and might irritate you further with hatred or worship."

Potter bit his lip. He looked young now, much younger than the skilled negotiator who had confronted Lucius in his study over the weregild that he wanted Lucius to pay for the youngest Weasley. "That's a perspective I never considered before."

_Of course not, because I am wiser than both you and the fools that you usually deal with._

But Lucius was also wise enough to know that saying that would not exactly encourage the boy. He only nodded and examined his sleeve for a moment. "I think Draco would like to speak with you, when you make your decision about whether to stay here or not."

"Well, I don't have a _choice _right now."

And Potter gave him a look of loathing and walked off. Lucius sighed. He had done what he could. Narcissa should be pleased, and Draco, once Lucius had found him and discharged the errand from his mother.

The rest was up to Potter, and would have to be left up to him. Lucius was not sure that Draco understood that part yet.

* * *

"May I ask what you intended when you kissed Potter?"

Draco sighed and leaned further back on the stone bench that one of his ancestors had put outside near the largest rosebushes in the gardens. The white roses spread ripples of new, honey-like scent on the air whenever the breeze stirred them. They had helped to calm Draco down, but the tension had crinkled his spine up again the minute he heard his father's voice.

"To fool the goblins and make them think he was really submissive," he mumbled, watching his hands. "I told you that."

"You did not tell me the exact method." His father's voice was dry as he paused at the end of the bench and twirled his cane. Draco caught the flashes of the sun off the metal of the cane, but he kept his eyes on his hands, in his lap. "Was there a reason for that?"

"I thought you and Mother might object," Draco admitted, finally looking up.

"Why, when we did not object to the fact that you are practically courting him?" Lucius leaned on his cane and studied the white roses. "The house-elves need to trim these back. Just because they are beautiful is not reason enough to allow them to take over from the red roses."

"You didn't object then—" Draco began, and then stopped, because he wasn't even sure whether he was going to ask a question or start an incredulous statement. He sighed and let his head collapse into his hands. "It was so simple when it was just life-debts."

His father didn't answer for long moments, long enough for Draco to hope that Lucius would just walk away and leave it. But that wasn't his way, and sure enough, a second later he started talking again.

"We have given you little enough true happiness, Draco. Because of my choices, you and your mother had to suffer torments during the war that I would not wish on Potter."

Draco winced and lifted his head. "It wasn't just your choices." His left arm burned with memory.

"Perhaps not," said his father, with a pause delicate enough that Draco nearly got up and walked away. The shards of that memory pierced him so much. "But I was part of it, and since the war—I have learned—there are things more important than the traditions and continuity I once thought were greatest. If you were happy inside those traditions, well enough. But you are not going to be happy inside them."

Draco blinked and looked up at him. "How do you know that?" It wasn't like his parents had talked to him about his current beliefs or when he was going to get married in the year since the war. They were busy with too many other things, including just settling back into the Manor and dealing with their own memories of it.

"Because of the way that you look at Potter." Lucius reached out and tapped his cane against one of the tendrils of white roses that he said were overgrown, although honestly Draco didn't see how he could tell. They were just beautiful and there, and that was all that mattered to Draco. "I know that you'll follow him with your heart. You might never go with him if he persists in making his home in the Muggle world, but you won't stay completely here, either." He wrung his hand over the cane-head in a way that told Draco how difficult the next words were for him to speak. "I do not want you to enter into marriage or adult life with a divided heart."

Draco flushed hot enough that he nearly thought about ordering a house-elf to come outside and fling water on his face. "Just because I kissed him and don't want him to leave doesn't mean…I'm not in love with him, Father."

"But you are not in love with anyone else, either," Lucius told his reflection in the surface of the cane. "And that sets out, helps to limit and guarantee, your reactions to him. At the moment, you feel passionately that you're interested in him." He eyed Draco sideways. "And you wouldn't be happy if he left, even at the end of a year."

Draco studied his tightly-clasped hands. No, he wouldn't. He felt that.

But he brought up, hardly knowing why, the arguments he had expected his parents to use against _him_. "This is—it's an unusual situation, though, Father. Of course it is. Maybe I just feel so intensely about Harry because we're all in the same house together, and he's been training me to duel. Maybe I would feel that way about anyone I'd wanted to befriend who finally started paying attention to me."

Lucius made a smothered sound. Draco stared at him. Had that been laughter?

"And who else is there, whom you wished to befriend and who rejected you?" Lucius asked, facing him fully. "You were very proud of telling me how everyone you wished to capture either came to your hand, or was a Gryffindor whom you hated anyway. Except for one person. One Gryffindor."

Draco hesitated. "But you would say that that's just the frustrated desires of a child coming out, right? I mean, of course you would," he finished, a little lamely, when Lucius only studied him as though Draco had started pulling roses off the bushes with his bare hands. "I can't want to spend the rest of my life with someone we rescued because of life-debts and someone we had to pretend to enslave."

"Many things seem possible now that did not eighteen months ago," said Lucius, and turned away.

_So now, of course, after he brought all that up, he's going to leave me here to figure it out on my own?_

But to have a sort of blessing on his possible friendship with Harry, to have his parents thinking so deeply about what made him happy, was more than Draco had ever _hoped _to have.

He sat back, and thought for a long time.

* * *

"Forgive me for intruding, but you do not look happy."

Harry started and looked up. Narcissa had come on him in the small dining room where they usually ate meals, sometimes accompanied by Draco and Lucius now. He had been sitting at the table and turning dishes over in his hands without seeming to notice the clink of crystal and silver.

"Is it time for lunch?" Harry stood up and scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck. "Sorry. I'll move out of the way."

"It is remarkable to me," said Narcissa, settling in the chair next to his instead of the one across the table from him, "that you see me and immediately assume that you are in the way, instead of simply early for lunch."

Harry looked at her and said nothing. Narcissa thought he was trying to feel her out, to see what she thought about the kisses that he and Draco had shared earlier.

Narcissa, unlike Lucius, who found honesty difficult even now, when the war had destroyed so many of his preconceptions, decided she might as well tell him.

"I suspect what convinced the goblins," she said, "more than your chains and your charade, was the expression of happiness on Draco's face when he kissed you."

Harry froze. "What?"

Narcissa nodded. "He was not taking pleasure in your enslavement, I would think, but he _was _taking it from the way that you kissed him back, and the way that he got to kiss you in the first place."

Harry went on staring. When Narcissa said nothing more, he shook his head and demanded, "And you don't care about that?"

Narcissa raised her eyebrows. "Of course I care that my son is happy. I would say that I care when you are happy, too, but at the moment, I do not think that anything I can do will contribute more than momentarily to your pleasure."

Harry shook his head. "He wants me to stay here. I can't do that."

"I can understand why you would wish to leave the Manor at the end of this year, yes, no matter how luxurious we can make it for you."

"No, I mean he wants me to stay in the wizarding world."

"He cannot force you," said Narcissa. "He is not your owner in truth, you know, and neither are we. He can only ask you to reconsider."

Harry showed her his teeth. "And stay here with all the people who irritate me?"

"If you _did _decide to remain in the Manor, the wards would keep most of them out."

Harry narrowed his eyes a little. "I can't decide whether you're making fun of me or not."

"Merely giving you a chance to think about other possibilities, the way that Draco is also doing," said Narcissa, and had to smile at the baffled look on his face. She gestured, and the first plates and glasses appeared on the table, along with pitches of water that tilted themselves into the glasses. "_Now _it is time for lunch."


	11. A Delicate Matter

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven—A Delicate Matter_

"So I'd really like more of an answer as to why it's so important to you that I stay in the wizarding world."

Draco stood in the middle of their training room and folded his arms. "I came here expecting training, not an interrogation."

"You're going to get both." Harry prowled towards him, his wand hanging lightly against his leg. Draco wondered if he should watch that or his eyes. Harry had emphasized the importance of both in his training so far, but Draco had to admit this was a fairly _unusual _kind of training that he hadn't expected to receive. "But first, I want to know why it's so important. This time a month ago, I doubt you gave me a thought."

"I thought it was unfair that the goblins were going to enslave you," Draco decided to correct him. "I didn't know that my parents were going to come up with this plan to rescue you, though."

Harry snorted a little. "Question dodged." A second later, a Stinging Hex, as painful as though Harry had hit him with a flung stone, blossomed on his hip. Draco hopped and yelped.

"Every time you don't answer," Harry explained, stalking around him in a circle, "you'll have to pay that kind of penalty."

Draco huffed a sullen breath and answered. "I saw you kneeling before my father and the goblins that first time they visited, and it struck me how unfair it all was."

Harry paused and gave him an unexpectedly distant stare, as if Draco was a kind of light showing him a path he didn't want to take. Draco looked back, as unflinching as he could. Part of what he wanted to do was show Harry that path. Harry couldn't make him back down just by staring and looking weird, either.

Maybe Harry came to the same conclusion, because he shook his head in what looked like irritation and returned to his stalking. "You've thought about that, have you? Well, I've had a lot longer than you have to think about how unfair it is. And I agree. It's terrible. I hate the wizarding world for abandoning me. So I decided to abandon it. Why would you think that I should do the opposite when you've only been considering it for a few days?"

"Maybe because I haven't obsessed about it and I'm not blinded by hatred like you are," Draco said, his temper finally waking up. Harry was being so bloody _patronizing. _"And because I can see that the wizarding world owes you. The best response would be to stay and make them pay, not abandon them."

Once again Harry gave him that distant stare, but this time, Draco thought what he was seeing was the future. "I can't change people's minds. If anything could, Gringotts threatening to make me a slave would have. So the best thing I can do is preserve my own peace of mind and happiness."

"I agree," said Draco. "Absolutely. But you can be a lot happier in a protected place in the wizarding world than you can be in the Muggle one."

"I still don't want to stay here."

"Not in Diagon Alley, or Hogwarts, or Gringotts," said Draco. "That's fine. They don't have the power to protect you. We do."

Harry hissed at him. "Have you considered what's going to happen when the life-debts are fulfilled? When the year is up? There's no way that your parents would let me stay here."

Draco snorted. "I think you've halfway persuaded my father into it already, just by being important to me. He wants me to be happy. And my mother accepts you. They wouldn't kick you out if you wanted to make the Manor your home."

"Because of the prestige that my name adds to yours?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "A second ago, you were convinced that the entire wizarding world hated you and nothing you could do would change that, and that my parents were among the people who hated you. Make up your _mind_, would you? Are we using you for our own gain or barely tolerating you?"

"It could be both."

"Maybe," said Draco. "But my parents take the life-debts seriously, and my father would never have given up a long-term advantage, like the vault, for only a temporary one. I'm afraid that you'll have to resign yourself to being a wanted guest."

Harry glared. Draco would take that over the remote staring. At least it meant that Harry was fully engaged with both him and the world, this time.

"Tell me why you decided that it was so unfair."

"Seeing you kneel is wrong," Draco blurted. He hadn't meant to be so blunt and straightforward, but Harry's eyes were so _astonished_, and Draco thought he needed to hear this. "When you saved the world, and you were meant to be my _equal. _My rival shouldn't kneel like that. Neither should my dueling teacher."

"But your slave does."

Draco waved his hands. "And we're trying to fool the goblins by doing this! That doesn't mean that I think of you as a slave in truth!" And he never would, even if Harry was being so exasperating right now that Draco could kind of see why someone might _want _to enslave him. Maybe then he would listen.

Harry considered him with wild eyes. "But I would have thought you would enjoy seeing your rival humbled."

Draco grimaced. He wondered if he could explain that strange moment of revelation he'd had when he saw Harry kneeling and bending towards his father's boots, and decided he would have to try. Harry would never believe him without it. "I thought that, too. Then it happened. Maybe I would have known this earlier if—if I had ever seen you really humbled at Hogwarts." It galled him to admit that Harry had always beaten him there, but Harry didn't seem ready to gloat about it. "You were made for better things, that was all. But maybe I can beat you fairly. That would be one thing, to knock you on your arse in the dueling room and have it _mean _something.

"And it would mean something if I was the one who made you want to abandon the wizarding world, too," Draco added, inspired. "But I wasn't. It was the goblins, and the public who decided to turn their backs on you, and I don't want that to be true. _I _want to be the one to affect you. To make you fall down or decide to stay. That's the truth of it."

Harry stared some more. Then he said, "I can believe _that_, at least. You wanted to be my friend, and when I didn't want to—"

"I still wanted to be important to you." Draco cleared his throat a little, because now that he had spoken the truth, he had to worry about Harry believing him but still finding it childish. "I know it doesn't sound—adult. Maybe I should have grown up and learned something after the war. Maybe I should leave you alone. But I can't."

"And if I go into the Muggle world…"

"Then I'll never see you again." Draco folded his arms and tried his best to quell any joke at his expense that Harry might come up with. "And that's simply unacceptable."

Harry stood there for a long time, and then lowered his head to stare at his hands. Draco watched him. This might be more important than the ultimate decision Harry would make about whether to stay in or leave the wizarding world. This was the moment when Harry would make the decision about whether he could believe in or trust Draco.

Draco knew that he wouldn't give up if Harry decided against him. He would just continue annoying him and training with him and talking to him and trying to persuade him until Harry either changed his mind or offered Draco some insult that made it not worth persisting.

But it would sure be a lot easier if Harry made the choice now, and it was the choice to let Draco come in and continue with his meddling.

* * *

_What am I going to find in the Muggle world? _

Harry knew the answer even as he asked himself. It wasn't like he hadn't endured his friends' questions in the past few months, as the fact that he was going to be a goblin slave became reality and all the ways they tried to fight it collapsed in on themselves. They wanted to know why he would give the goblins the "satisfaction" of going to the Muggle world. They said it was giving up. They said that he should shove the fact of his enslavement in everyone's faces and make them ashamed of themselves.

Harry had replied that he would have peace in the Muggle world, plenty of people who didn't recognize him and wouldn't care to try, and that mattered more to him than vengeance.

That was still true.

Now, though, he began to wonder if Draco was right, and it wouldn't be peace so much as desolation. No one to bother him there because no one knew what had happened in the war—but no one to sympathize with him, either. How was he supposed to explain some of his scars and his reflexes and his strangeness to Muggles? If he could find the right sort of person here, they would understand without the need for endless explanation.

But it didn't mean that the Malfoys were the right ones to help him with that kind of peace.

"I could stay in the wizarding world and still never see you again," he pointed out, to see what Draco would say.

Draco sneered a little. "I would make sure that our paths crossed again."

"Because you want to see if you can best me in a duel?"

"You're being _wilfully _obtuse," said Draco, and managed to make that cut in a way that his insults about Harry and his parents had never managed when they were kids. "Because I want to know that I matter to you, the way I just explained. When you ask a question and I answer it, try not to ignore the answer."

Harry firmed his mouth and looked off to the side. He was thinking of something else now, the wizarding world's wild adoration of him in the months before the goblins had made it clear what they wanted to pay Harry's "debt" to them. "There are lots of other people who want to be important to me, too. My friend or my lover or…God knows what else. I don't want them back."

"Yes, but I'm different from them."

"How?" Harry eyed him a little narrowly. "It seems that you started liking me and wanting to be important to me _awfully _suddenly, the minute your family made the decision to pay the life-debts to me. That's like how some of them showed up after the war and said they wanted to help me fight it."

"Because none of them were me."

Harry snorted in spite of himself. "I'll say one thing for you, Malfoy, you don't lack self-confidence."

"Stop trying to shove me away like that." Draco edged forwards, his face intense. "Or are you going to pretend that you regularly kissed these admirers of yours and plotted with them to find a way to free yourself from unwanted slavery?"

Harry felt as though he had forgotten how to smile. "I kissed you because it was part of a plan. And sure, I would have cooperated with a bunch of them if they could have got me out of the goblin slavery, or even _offered _to do it. Only _no one did._"

"I didn't, either."

Harry reached up and tugged harshly on his hair, hoping that would help soothe both his temper and his confusion. It didn't, or at least not enough to matter. He leaned forwards and caught Draco's eye. "Then why did you kiss me?" He was proud of himself for not exploding at Draco, or making Draco explode.

"My parents were the ones who offered to help free you," said Draco. "And if you think my kiss was only part of the plan, then you're wrong. Otherwise, the second kiss wouldn't have happened. I enjoyed it. I wouldn't do something like that if I didn't enjoy it. I would have come up with something else."

Harry shook his head. "But that doesn't fit with what you said about wanting to be important to me!"

"It doesn't?" Draco looked as baffled as though Harry had told him he didn't need a wand for his dueling spells. "Why not?"

Harry bowed his head into his hands and gave a short, comprehensive, but muffled scream. "_Because_," he said, lifting his head, "you were talking about rivalry or friendship or something. Not what a kiss implies."

"What does a kiss imply? Something for Gryffindors that it doesn't for anyone else?"

"It would imply that you loved me," said Harry flatly. That ought to stop this nonsense. One thing he did know, with all his heart and his conviction, was that Draco Malfoy wasn't in love with him.

"Then I suppose you've loved a lot of people in your life," Draco said instead, meditatively. "You were in love with Cho Chang, right? That was the rumor going around fifth year, that she was the one you kissed, even if she was crying during it." Harry lifted his head and opened his mouth to ask who had blurted _that _out, but Draco was continuing. "And you must have been in love with Ginny Weasley."

"None of your business if I was." Ginny had rather fallen by the wayside in the chaos of the year after the war, as Harry tried to get used to no Voldemort and starting Auror training and then dealing with the majority of the wizarding world betraying him. He wasn't about to start talking about how complicated his feelings with Ginny were.

"Were you in love with them?" Draco touched his fingers to his chin. "Or me? You _did _kiss me back, after all."

"That was part of the ruse," said Harry, tiredly. His head really did hurt. Why had he thought talking to Draco would make things _less _confusing? Obviously, he was a fool. "You know that."

"So a kiss can mean more than one thing," Draco replied instantly. "And I already told you what mine meant. I like you a lot, and I want you to pay attention to me. I _don't _want you to go away, because I wouldn't want to live in the Muggle world." He paused, and raised both eyebrows, as though some interesting revelation had just come to him. "Any more than your friends want to, I suspect."

"None of your business what they do, either."

Draco sighed, and his face and voice were both more serious when he spoke again. "It's to do with both of us. You know it is. Yes, perhaps I should have explained everything immediately and clearly up-front, like a Gryffindor that you're used to, but I've done it now. You're the one who has to accept it or not. Can you at least tell me that you're reconsidering staying?"

"That's too big a decision for me to make all at once."

Draco nodded, as though he had known that would be the result but had thought he would ask anyway. "Then the only thing I ask is that you consider it carefully, and deeply. Don't hold onto a decision that you made before you got to know me."

"And you really think that you're enough to make me change my mind, when my friends couldn't? All by yourself?"

"I _know_ I am."

Harry shook his head. For some reason, he was smiling, which didn't often happen to him when he discussed his plans to leave for the Muggle world with his friends. "Fine. But right now, I think we've talked enough about it. Your dueling training is more important. How much do you know about spells that let you strike from ambush?"

* * *

Narcissa touched the white roses that the house-elf had presented her with, and tilted them towards the light of the fire. Then she shook her head, and watched the elf's ears droop. "I'm afraid they are not silver enough for me yet," she said. "Add some small crystals to the soil, and see what happens."

The elf bowed to her. "Mistress." Then it gathered the flowers in a tight bundle, lower lip set with determination, and disappeared.

"Causing distress among the house-elves again, Cissy?"

Narcissa looked up, smiling. Lucius had stepped into her sitting room and shut the door behind him, and she admired the way the sunlight coming through the window shone on his bright hair, making some small sparks leap from it. "Trying to help them breed me the perfect flower," she said. "The silver rose. I think that the next try might do it. The flowers today really were close to it, but not perfect enough to keep."

"I don't know why you want silver roses," said Lucius, and crossed the room to drop a kiss on her lips.

Narcissa turned and arranged herself on the couch so that Lucius could sit down and have room for his cane. "Because I want their particular beauty in the house," she said. "We once knew how to grow them. My own ancestors, I mean. It is possible, even if the knowledge has been lost with the centuries."

Lucius snorted in a way that showed his mind wasn't on the subject they were supposedly discussing. Narcissa, who knew him well, guided the conversation back to what he wanted to talk about. "So. What troubles you about Harry and Draco?"

Lucius frowned at her. "It does not _trouble _me. It makes me wonder how long the charade we are deceiving the goblins with can work, if Draco becomes unwilling to push—Harry to take part in it."

Narcissa shrugged. "Then Harry can appear with illusions of Draco, and with you, or me. That is the least of my worries when it comes to our con on the goblins."

"You seem calmer about this than I would have imagined, when they have _kissed _each other."

"It did trouble you more than you showed at the time," said Narcissa, with a little sigh of satisfaction, and reached up to run her fingers through Lucius's hair. "I thought so."

Lucius pulled away and shook his head, putting a stop to the curls and tangles she was trying to create in it. "And this does not _worry _you? It does not _concern _you that our son may be tying his future to someone who cannot oblige him?"

"If you would tell me what exactly it is you fear, then perhaps I could help," Narcissa pointed out. "I have always been better with specifics than with cryptic hints."

Lucius nodded briskly, acknowledging the reference to the hints he had tried to give her when they could not communicate openly, while the Dark Lord was living in the Manor, but refusing to discuss it. "Fine. I am afraid that Draco will find himself romantically attached to the boy. I told Draco that I will understand if he wants to be happy outside the traditions, and I will. But I am afraid that the Potter boy will turn on him and not find a place for Draco in _his _life. As far as I know, he is still determined to leave the wizarding world at the end of the year."

Narcissa shrugged, unconcerned. "We have a year to change his mind, then."

"_We_?"

Narcissa took her husband's chin in her hand and smiled into his eyes. "Yes, _we_. After all, we can give Harry the indispensable experience of family. And he is still jumpy and skittish and reluctant to indulge in the pleasures that he could take here. If we treat them as ordinary parts of our lives and show him that we can enjoy them as well, perhaps he will calm down. I know that attachment to other people is his strongest driving motive, but that doesn't mean he cannot enjoy the luxuries of life."

Lucius only looked at her, and looked at her, until Narcissa laughed and kissed him in the middle of his forehead. "I suppose you will ask me now why we should wish to give him that experience."

"Yes," said Lucius. "Perhaps I was too hasty in bringing my fears about Draco to you. After all, just as there is an alternative to Draco appearing with Harry each time the goblins come, there is an alternative to him following Harry into the Muggle world. He may not fall in love with him. He may want something else. He may give up when he realizes that he can't persuade Harry to stay in the wizarding world."

Narcissa sighed. "And do you think it would be fair if Harry was driven out of the world he helped save?"

Lucius sighed back at her. "I am unaccustomed to considering fairness in relation to my enemies, even if they are _former _enemies."

"There is a certain kind of honor," Narcissa reminded him quietly, "that we chose to serve when we chose to repay the life-debts. We could have paid them back with lesser services, or waited until his year of slavery was up. We were the ones who _chose _to do this. I wish to continue following that honor wherever it leads us."

Lucius looked sour. "If you imagine that I would be integral in persuading Potter—"

"I want you to do only what you're already doing," Narcissa interrupted him, because she knew from experience that the course he was pursuing now would only lead him in tiresome directions. "Show that you love both Draco and me. Stay out of Harry's way and don't antagonize him. Show him that there is a family here, that we have this beautiful Manor and this beautiful life, and that it is attractive."

"There is a limit to how many luxuries of the Manor he can use. The elves are still uneasy about serving him because they're uncertain about his status."

"And because they see that you're uneasy about him." Narcissa shook his head when he stared at her. "You forget always about the relationship between the house-elves and the master of the Manor, Lucius. Of course they're going to take their cue from you, and to think that they don't know how to treat him well if you don't know how to treat him. You don't need to break out in loving demonstrations of affection, but do try to relax a bit."

"You said I could stay out of his way."

"If you also relax."

Lucius placed his hand in his chin and stared off into the distance. "Even if we allow him to enjoy the place, he might be too _noble_ a Gryffindor to do it."

"He might," Narcissa allowed. "But we will not stand in his way, and we will let him make the choice for himself." She paused. "Won't we?"

Lucius nodded. "You're probably right," he said. "You usually are."

Narcissa smiled, and drew his head down to rest on her shoulder. She wouldn't dispute with the words in that particular sentence that she _might _take issue with. She knew Lucius was trying.

And if he could be happy, and her son could be happy, even down to the healing of the silly but stinging wound he had received from Harry's rejection in his first year…

Narcissa saw no reason not to strive for that happiness.


End file.
